The biggest launch in entertainment this month isn’t a new film. It’s a video game, and it’s about to break records.
It’s still far too easy for non-gamers to trivialize the video game industry. After all, it’s just a load of fat kids and man-babies who should probably move out of their parent’s basements and get a life, right? Wrong.
Video games are now the dominant form of entertainment in the world (you’ll be surprised to know the average age of a gamer these days is 35, and 48 percent of them are women) with profit margins that now dwarf those in Hollywood. While the likes of Disney that controls the silver screen, in the world of video games it’s another company, and its background has little to do with cartoon rabbits and talking racoons.
Rockstar Games are the fun-loving chaps behind the games that gave your parents nightmares when you were little; Grand Theft Auto saw you mow down pedestrians on the streets of an eerily-accurate virtual rendition of New York, Bully saw you steal nerds lunch money and smoke behind the school’s PE shed, and Max Payne probably deserved its own rating system owing to the sheer number of baddies you shot through the face.
For those who still think these titles sound a tad niche for mass-market appeal, consider Rockstar Games’ last launch Grand Theft Auto V, which has to date made US$6 billion in revenue (and is the most profitable entertainment product of all time by a huge margin). That game was released back in 2013, and the entertainment world has waited patiently for the studio’s next blockbuster game to hit shelves. That time is now.
Red Dead Redemption 2 – the follow-up to Rockstar Games’ first “Grand Theft Auto with Horses” – arrives this month and for the first time, it will be official in the UAE (thanks to a new 21+ rating system). The new game promises a huge open world, a gripping storyline based around the American Old West and gunfights, lots and lots of gunfights.
Our advice? Lob your router out the window, quit your job and book an Airbnb on top of a Tibetan mountain for two weeks. This thing is going to be big.
Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2 is available in stores and online in the UAE on October 26. You need to be 21 and over to purchase a copy. information,
