Netflix’s exclusivity deal for the Grand Theft Auto 6 reveal in August struck me as a little silly. Sure, it’d probably make “a little pocket change,” as PC Gamer’s Harvey Randall put it at the time, but a video that would remain exclusive for only six hours? Not days? How much of an impact could that really have?
Well, uh, quite a lot, as it turns out. We already knew that Netflix was probably pretty happy with how it all worked out, but a Variety report nails it down more specifically and impressively, saying Netflix pulled in 31.1 million views with the GTA 6 reveal between its August 27 debut and August 30, which is when the window for its weekly top 10 ranking closes.
That’s not just a huge number, it makes the reveal showcase Netflix’s most-watched title of the week, topping the English-language film list, where it was classified, in 87 out of 93 countries.
Latest Videos FromPC Gamer
It’s not a direct comparison because of the differences in how they count “views,” but that Netflix number—again, over just four days—is almost double the 17 million views YouTube has put up in total since the showcase went live on that platform.
Here it is, if you haven’t seen it—although given those viewership numbers, my guess is that if you wanted to see it, you likely already have.
Watch On
The GTA 6 reveal was a unique phenomenon, not the sort of thing that’s easily duplicated year over year, but it was obviously a big win for Netflix, which got to be the tip of a very pointy spear for a short but lucrative stretch of time. Take-Two hasn’t said what it got out of the deal, although I imagine money would figure prominently.
But the scale of its success makes me wonder if maybe we’ll see more of this in the future: GTA is a rare bird but I could see Microsoft setting something up for future Call of Duty reveals, possibly, or Sony opting for a similar exclusivity window for particularly important State of Play showcases. Gaming is mainstream now—maybe this is what that ultimately looks like.
Read the full article here