Veteran games analyst Mat Piscatella of Circana has called GTA 6 possibly the most important thing "to ever release in the industry," so in a recent interview, as Rockstar's long-awaited open-world monolith slowly approaches, I was keen to dig into the idea of this rising tide lifting all boats. Much of our conversation revolved around the one-two punch of GTA 6 and the still-unnamed Nintendo Switch 2, the software and hardware releases poised to define the next year in gaming, if not beyond.
The fact that these two software and hardware titans are coming in the same year is, to put it mildly, simultaneously almost unprecedented and increasingly necessary. To put it less mildly, Piscatella says "if one misses the year, or if one doesn't deliver on expectations, it could be a much tougher look" for the industry in 2025. Either way, Piscatella reckons "these are the two things that could really change the course of consumer behavior when it comes to gaming."
