So I’m sitting here flipping through the channels and as is customary for this time of night a good portion of them consist of nothing but infomercials. As I’m flipping along I come across the following screen:
It’s a count down clock for the release of the trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV and the seconds are slowly ticking off. Now I’m a big GTA fan having played GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas so this naturally catches my attention, but it takes me a moment to realize that the count down clock is currently showing that the trailer won’t be released for another 7+ days.
Then it hits me: If it’s 7 days away then what the hell are they going to show during this half-hour infomercial? It’s not just going to be this stupid clock the entire time is it? Well, as it turns out, the answer is yes.
Now I’m not such a GTA fanboy that I sat there for the entire half-hour just to see if it did anything different, but I did pop back to the channel (it was the FX channel as I recall) during commercial breaks elsewhere just to see if it was still showing the count down clock and it was every time I switched to that channel. At the half-hour mark it switched to a different infomercial for some craptastic pretend exercise machine that would supposedly make you look like Christie Brinkley.
So the folks at Rockstar Games paid good advertising money to show a half-hour’s worth of a count down clock promoting a trailer that’s not due to be released for another 7 days. Considering how popular the last three installments were you’d think there wouldn’t be a lot of need for them to hype the next iteration all that much, but I guess if you’ve got it then flaunt it. As it was it still made for a much more entertaining infomercial than any of the others I’ve ever bothered to watch for any amount of time.
Well it worked. The blogosphere is abuzz with people like you posting about a countdown splash screen. And with people like me who go “Oh, great, finally SOME info will come along!”
What’s the city gonna be? I’d love Tokyo or Moscow, but I fear they will play it safe and use London as the background. Named something else likely, though.