Given all that, you can understand that my excitement about the upcoming November release of Grand Theft Auto VI is limited. Netflix doing an exclusive preview of the game baffles me, as I can't remember them having done that for other games. But what puzzles me the most is the general feeling of absolute certainty: Everybody is sure that Grand Theft Auto 6 will launch in November without the slightest technical problem, it will be the greatest game ever, it will immediately sell millions of copies, it will suck all money out of the video game market for weeks, so nobody else can have a successful game launch in November, and shortly after GTA 6 will switch on a live service multiplayer online part of the game that will not have any server problems and somehow not cannibalize GTA 5 Online either.

Personally, I am not so certain that all this will be true. In this day and age, who would believe that a major game studio like Blizzard Activision, EA, Bioware, or Ubisoft could be able to launch a multi-million player, multi-platform game without a hitch? Why would we automatically dismiss this possibility for most game studios, but be absolutely certain that Rockstar will do it? Why are we so certain that GTA 6 will be considered the best part of the series, when we have lots of examples of game series where the latest incarnation is considered less good than previous parts? And why would all our criticism of live service games and all our experience with them failing not apply to GTA 6 Online?

I don't doubt at all that GTA 6 will make truckloads of money. But I am open to the possibility that things could go wrong during launch, or that ultimately GTA 6 will not be considered the best game ever of the series. If parent company Take-Two Interactive would know the recipe of the secret sauce that makes any sequel better than the previous games, why didn't they use that sauce on Civilization VII or Borderlands 4? My general impression of the state of the video game industry is that there is no way to guarantee a surefire success, even for a $1 billion game.