When Mat Piscatella, Circana’s director of video games, dropped that line in a conversation with me, I had to stop myself from literally dropping my jaw. The statement itself didn’t come as a shock so much as the fact that someone had finally said it in so many words.

The sentiment sounds like it should be a given. No game in the history of the medium has ever been universally loved, nor universally played. But the industry seems convinced that, if any single game ever is, it’ll be Grand Theft Auto VI. Almost every publisher has either retreated to the September-October release window or to moved forward to 2027, with Nintendo and its Ocarina of Time remake as a notable exception.

No one wants their game to come out at the same time as Grand Theft Auto VI, right? The trouble, Piscatella said, is that some gamers who don’t want to play GTA will be underserved in a crucial pre-holiday period.

I caught up with Piscatella for our quarterly check-in after Circana put out its September report. Below is an edited transcript of our interview:

Mat Piscatella: At the moment, spending is holding up fairly well, as one would have expected going into this November. Hardware spending is okay. Units are a little bit iffier because of the pricing changes year-on-year, but overall spend’s doing okay. It’s holding on. It’ll do okay through Ocarina and GTA, maybe better than okay. Then we’ll see what happens in December and January.

I don’t think anyone has a great read on what everything looks like after these two big games come out, especially for the console market.

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