There was a whole culture around this, a "we got (insert thing here) before GTA 6" meme that was potentially bigger than the game itself will be, and was so ingrained in the general culture that people who never played GTA would use it. With the announcement of GTA VI, there was was both good and bad.
Good in that Rockstar was getting hype for it and fans were promised a new GTA game, bad in the sense that the joke was over and the boots Rockstar now have to fill are possibly too big. It's been so long, with GTA V being released in 2013, that this new game may be too little too late, no matter what. This has also been the case with "Borderlands 4," where, despite the immense amount of marketing that went into it (like an Xbox being turned on and immediately showing an ad for it), it has seen little publicity. The game came too late after "Borderlands 3" to actually matter. Now it seems the same will happen with GTA VI, with the hype phase having passed before the game has even been released.
All of these delays and loss of interest, combined with the evidence of "Borderlands 4" not doing as well as it could, are all pointing to one thing: game companies need to stop relying fully on old IPs and nostalgia for what they once made. Game makers: come up with something new.
While GTA VI has the chance to do well, what comes after? GTA 7? 8? This can't go on forever like many companies (cough, EA, cough) think it can. IPs need to end at some point, and these companies just aren't letting them die in peace. For example, "Plants VS. Zombies: Replanted," a remake of the first PVZ, has had allegations of AI usage, and the community seems to think the game was made purely for money. And you know what? It probably was. EA saw a game that made money the first time around, and thought they could just make it again.
GTA VI only seems to fuel the doubts people have about the game, and with a price point of $69.99. It's being called the first AAAA game, as Nigel Lowrie said to IGN: "I mean, there are AAA games and then there's AAAA games and I'd argue that Grand Theft Auto is potentially the AAAAA game; it's just bigger than anything else both in the scope and scale of the game and the kind of cultural impact that it has and the attention it demands."
Rockstar may be making the expectations so high that when the game comes out and fails to meet them, fans will be exceedingly disappointed. The game will probably do well, but at what point will companies stop focusing on things that have been finished?
Over at Microsoft, they seem to have no idea where to go with the "Halo" story, so they're remaking the first game. At EA, they made a remake of "Plants vs Zombies," at Nintendo… okay, Nintendo is actually doing fine, they haven't done remakes in a while, and icons like "Mario" have enough staying power as is. One last company that's been sticking to a franchise is 2K, with "Borderlands 4" seeming to be too late to matter to fans (same thing with the Borderlands movie, which has already been mostly forgotten).
All things considered regarding "GTA VI," it may do well, but the GTA games as a franchise seem to end with the sixth game. Rockstar can't make infinite GTA games; they have to move on at some point.
They just don't seem to know what point that is.
