New Zelda and GTA represent a games industry that no longer exists
- The Stepback
The two biggest games of the year launch in November, offering some reprieve from a terrible year.
by Andrew WebsterNov 1, 2026, 1:00 PM UTC
- The Stepback
The two biggest games of the year launch in November, offering some reprieve from a terrible year.
by Andrew WebsterNov 1, 2026, 1:00 PM UTC Andrew Webster is an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.
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How it started
The two biggest games of 2026 are set to launch just a few weeks apart in November.
On the one side you have the behemoth that is Grand Theft Auto VI, an experience 13 years in the making, and the sequel to one of the best-selling games in history. Its predecessor, GTA V, has sold a staggering 230 million copies since it launched in 2013, and was re-released across three generations of consoles. Developer Rockstar is a pioneer in the realm of open-world games, dating back to GTA III, and the scale and ambitions of those worlds have steadily grown since then. With GTA V and later Red Dead Redemption 2, the studio’s ideas reached a new level of realism. And the sixth GTA looks poised to eclipse them both, which has created an unprecedented level of demand.
Analyst firm Circana estimates that 29 percent of gamers in the US intend to buy the game, with demand so large it could boost flagging console sales. “Many consumers who have yet to upgrade to a current-generation console may choose to purchase a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series specifically to play the title,” analyst Mat Piscatella says in a statement. GTA VI’s reach is so vast that almost every other major game launched early to avoid it.
The one exception is Nintendo. The company’s tentpole release for the holidays, and its next major exclusive for the Switch 2, is a lavish remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
The release is notable for a few reasons. For one thing, it’s an attempt from Nintendo to modernize one of the most influential and beloved games in its long history. The original Ocarina of Time was the world’s first introduction to a 3D iteration of Hyrule, which, in turn, made it an early glimpse at what was possible in three-dimensional spaces, laying a blueprint for countless games that came afterward. Nintendo has since expanded on that, turning Switch-era adventures Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom into wide-open adventures designed for player creativity. They went on to become some of the best-selling games for Nintendo’s most successful console.
Ocarina of Time’s launch also comes just ahead of a live-action Zelda movie in 2027, which could catapult the franchise to a new level of prominence. That’s why Nintendo is seemingly the only company unafraid of competing with GTA.
These aren’t just two blockbuster games – they’re two series with the pull to make this a real cultural moment, akin to “Barbenheimer” but for video games. They’re the kind of launches that make it onto Saturday Night Live and have NBA players worried.
It’s just too bad about the rest of the industry.
How it’s going
These major November releases are something of a mirage, two outliers that stand out amid the wreckage that is the rest of the video game industry. While there have been plenty of major releases and great games this year, the main theme of 2026 has been just how dire things have become. Layoffs, studio closures, unpopular business models, the ever-looming threat of AI, and massive increases in hardware costs have combined to create an ominous cloud over the medium.
Here is just a snapshot of what the year has been like: Xbox is in the middle of a “reset” that involves laying off thousands of developers, shutting down some studios, and gutting others; Fortnite developer Epic cut more than 1,000 jobs due to a sharp downturn in the live-service games space, and it’s currently going all-in on vibe coding; Sony is also struggling, slashing jobs at Destiny developer Bungie, watching console sales plummet as costs skyrocket, and raising the ire of gamers by moving on from physical media; and meanwhile, major publishers like EA and Ubisoft are in their own dramatic stat
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