Five Hundred Million Is Impossible To Ignore

No badges on that Rover.

By Gunnar Heinrich

NIKOLAI “Niko” Bellic is the new Scarface. And true to inflationary form, his gig has already netted him (and his creators) far more dough than Tony Montana ever could imagine.

Starting this week, we can expect that dorm rooms and frat houses on college campuses around America will pin up large posters of this rags-to-riches video game antihero who’ll appear alongside Al Pacino’s omnipresent Cubano stoking mug.

Not a week old, Niko’s already made it to cult icon status.

Niko is the fictional protagonist in a third-person shooter game called Grand Theft Auto IV.

The game, developed by Rockstar Games and “published” by Take-Two Entertainment is part of an eight edition strong brand of console games that’s pushing the entertainment envelope off the proverbial table and blowing the gamer away with an uzi spray of physics simulations and gritty plot lines.

“Players can expect visible detail down to the weeds growing in the cracks in the sidewalk, cars and buildings of visibly different ages and a much greater level of verticality [huh?] in the buildings and bridges that they are able to explore as Niko moves through the city streets,” Amazon.com’s official reviewer enthused.

TAKEN FOR A RIDE

The auto industry, doubtless unprepared and beholden to political correctness, is already along for the ride in this carjacked vehicle of next wave interactive entertainment.

And there’s plenty of money to be made; The Financial Times hyperventelated that, “The Grand Theft Auto IV video game has stolen all entertainment records for an opening week, with global retail sales of about 6 [million] copies, or $500 [million].”

And yet none of the automobiles that appear in Grand Theft Auto IV are marque identifiable.

But like the game’s setting in fictional “Liberty City,” whose appearance is as eerily close to New York as the Jaguar XF’s profile is to the Lexus GS (ahem), there’s really no mistaking a Range Rover Sport HSE or a Ford Crown Vic for anything other than what they seem to be – but technically and legally aren’t.

Surely, you say, the auto industry will find a way around its collective P.C. inhibitions to cash in on this cow of new wave media gold.

Perhaps, though they’ll have to first contend with the likes of MADD, a militant Floridian lawyer, the skeptical Televised press, and governmental agencies like Gotham’s own City Hall who have all been busy vilifying (and rightfully so) the glamorized violence that the game’s content aims at the world’s impressionable 16-32 year olds.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

That said, the dollars generated by this surging enterprise is something a cash strapped Detroit nor a keen Stuttgart or Tokyo can afford to ignore.

There’s really only one question the automakers’ marketing departments are likely asking themselves: what’s the cost for cross-marketing with a malevolent new wave cult icon?

[Linked: FT | Wikipedia | Amazon | Rockstar Games]