With the November 19, 2026 launch creeping closer, one detail from a recent executive interview deserves more attention than it has been getting: how the publisher plans to handle the press review cycle for the most anticipated game in a generation. The short answer is that traditional, pre-release critic reviews are still very much part of the plan, even as their cultural weight shrinks.
Reviews still matter, even in 2026
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked directly whether professional review scores still carry weight ahead of the game's release. His answer was unambiguous: yes, they matter as much as ever.
He pointed out that Rockstar's track record is unusually consistent:
- Scores are typically in the mid-90s, sometimes high-90s
- Both GTA 5 (2013) and Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) hit a 97 Metacritic average
- That kind of result is, in his words, a reflection of the studio's commitment to quality
That is the bar the team is implicitly being measured against, whether they like it or not.
The catch: the review landscape has fundamentally changed
Industry voices have been quick to point out that hitting a 97 in 2026 will be much harder than it was in 2013, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the game.
A few things have shifted since the last big Rockstar release:
- The publisher used to be able to hand-pick a small group of friendly outlets for early access; that level of control is essentially gone
- Social platforms guarantee that at least one loud voice will trash the game on day one, no matter how good it is
- Every possible narrative – hype, backlash, contrarian takes, defenses – now runs in parallel from the moment the embargo lifts
In other words, even a genuinely brilliant game is almost guaranteed to pick up some dissenting reviews simply because the ecosystem rewards being first with a hot take.
Pro reviews are losing ground with players
Fresh industry data underlines why this conversation is happening at all. According to a recent economic impact report covering the gaming industry, only about 42% of surveyed players say they sometimes consult professional reviews before buying a game. That puts traditional critics in roughly seventh place among the information sources players actually use.
What is beating them:
- Official trailers and promo videos: 52%
- Word of mouth from other players: 50%
- General social media sentiment: 49%
- Commented gameplay videos on YouTube: 47%
For a game whose first two trailers already broke viewing records, that hierarchy is telling. The marketing push expected this summer, including the long-awaited third trailer, will likely move the needle far more than any single review score.
Why Rockstar will still send out review copies
Despite the shrinking influence of formal reviews, there is a clear reason the studio is expected to keep working with established outlets:
- Critics with early access have an incentive to deliver measured, detailed analysis rather than reflexive takedowns, because future access depends on credibility
- Readers, in turn, expect honest criticism rather than thinly veiled promotion, which keeps reviews from sliding into pure marketing
- That balance produces something the social media firehose cannot: a structured consensus that publishers, retailers and platform holders can point to
For a release of this scale, that signal is still commercially valuable even if individual scores no longer drive purchases the way they used to.
What to watch
A few things worth keeping an eye on as the summer marketing window opens:
- Which outlets get early access and how tightly the embargo is managed
- Whether the publisher experiments with content creators alongside traditional reviewers, as has become standard for other blockbusters
- How aggressively dissenting reviews get amplified versus drowned out once the first wave of scores lands
The headline number on launch day will still be the Metacritic average. But the more interesting story will be how that number is built – and how much it actually moves a player base that, by the industry's own data, mostly made up its mind from trailers and friends long before the first review went live.
Sources
