Rockstar Games' parent company has confirmed that marketing for 'Grand Theft Auto 6' will not begin until summer officially starts in the United States on 21 June, narrowing the likely window for the long-awaited third trailer and disappointing fans who had been braced for a reveal in late May.

That has fuelled mounting speculation that Trailer Three for 'Grand Theft Auto 6' might drop 'at any point,' driven by online rumours, social media chatter and the broader gaming industry's habit of using late spring to kick off blockbuster campaigns. Earlier this year, Take-Two Interactive chief executive Strauss Zelnick pointed to summer as the starting gun for Rockstar Games' marketing push, but some fans convinced themselves that 'summer' was being used loosely to mean the warmer months rather than the calendar season.

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In a statement to Variety, Zelnick drew a clear line, saying Rockstar Games would not start promoting 'Grand Theft Auto 6' until summer in the strict sense, which in the US begins on 21 June. In other words, the company is not treating rising temperatures as a green light for marketing.

'So the next few weeks, I don't think it'll be summertime yet, but when it's summertime, Rockstar Games expects to start marketing "GTA 6,"' Zelnick said.

On its face, it is a small clarification. In practice, it tilts the whole hype machine a few weeks down the road. If taken at face value, it rules out the chances of 'Grand Theft Auto 6' surfacing at headline events pencilled in for early June, including Summer Game Fest, the Xbox Games Showcase and any imminent PlayStation State of Play broadcasts. For players who had circled those dates as likely candidates, it is a reminder that Rockstar tends to follow its own calendar, not the industry's.

The company has done this before, of course. Previous 'Grand Theft Auto' entries have been revealed and marketed according to Rockstar's internal logic, with little regard for traditional expo windows. The studio knows that when it drops a trailer, it effectively creates its own event.

If Rockstar Games stays true to form, the opening salvo of this new phase of 'Grand Theft Auto 6' marketing will be a fresh trailer rather than a slow drip of screenshots or developer blogs. It would be only the third official trailer for the game and the first new footage in more than a year.

Crucially, this is widely expected to be the moment fans finally see gameplay. The first two trailers were cut like cinematic showreels, heavy on atmosphere and story hints but conspicuously light on raw mechanics. That decision has become a talking point in itself. For a series defined by its open-world systems, driving, combat and emergent chaos, there is only so long Rockstar can rely on tone pieces before players start asking harder questions about what actually changes in the moment-to-moment play.

Publishing gameplay in Trailer Three would answer at least some of those questions. It would also give Rockstar more to work with as it starts to build out the rest of the campaign, including television commercials, online ads, platform-specific promotions and the inevitable waves of social media clips that will follow.

Source: International Business Times UK