Grand Theft Auto followers, there may be some excellent news and a few unhealthy information. The excellent news is lastly, in spite of everything these years, now we have an precise day-and-date launch time for GTA 6. The unhealthy information? It’s round six months later than the ‘Fall 2025’ we have been initially informed. To many within the online game trade, the brand new date of May 26, 2026 is a welcome sigh of aid – dozens of publishers and builders of all sizes have been frightened of meticulously planning their launch campaigns solely to later uncover they’d be releasing in the identical month as this herculean title. However, there are various undated heavy-hitters on account of land subsequent yr that can now be frantically looking for a brand new date.
What’s clear is that Grand Theft Auto 6 has discovered itself touted because the lynchpin to the online game trade’s close to future – any information on the undertaking’s growth has an enormous ripple impact. So how does a six-month delay mirror a big change in Rockstar’s company tradition, name into query this yr’s console market income, and probably have an effect on the Switch 2?
Last yr, the online game trade’s whole income hit $184.3 billion, a 0.2% enhance from 2023. Contradicting analyst predictions of a slight downturn, it prompted a sigh of aid for online game producers and publishers. However, within the console area, income dropped by 1% – and we’re already seeing the implications. A downturn of console {hardware} gross sales mixed with a heightening know-how tariff struggle has compelled costs up for each Microsoft and Sony. This technology wants a definitive console-shifting title – it wants Grand Theft Auto 6.
Research teams estimate the crime sequel to make $1 billion off pre-orders alone and $3.2 billion in its first yr of launch. It took Grand Theft Auto 5 three days to make $1 billion, might it take Grand Theft Auto 6 simply 24 hours? Circana analyst Mat Piscatella believes that “there’s probably never been a more important thing to ever release in the industry,” as a result of the sport’s influence will assist outline our understanding of the online game trade’s potential progress over the following decade. There are rumors that it may very well be the first-ever $100 online game, making it a brand new watershed second for the trade. That new benchmark might give the trade the shot-in-the-arm progress many analysts say it wants. However, it’s additionally doable Grand Theft Auto 6 is just too a lot of a monolithic outlier to create progress outdoors of itself.
In 2018, Rockstar Games had a publicity disaster on its fingers. Reports of 100 hour weeks alongside previously necessary additional time while growing Red Dead Redemption 2, plus former and present staff talking on intense crunch durations stemming from Grand Theft Auto 4, painted a stark image of certainly one of gaming’s titans. Since then, the corporate has reportedly undergone an inner reinvention of kinds – in accordance with a Bloomberg report, contractors being transformed to full-time staff and a ‘flexitime’ coverage enabling employees to take day off for each hour of additional time labored are simply two of the numerous extra compassionate insurance policies enacted. Earlier this yr, Rockstar’s outdated status threatened to rear its head as workers have been made to return to the workplace 5 days per week to shut out Grand Theft Auto 6’s growth – a transfer which makes the rationale behind the delay fairly clear. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier confirmed as a lot on BlueSky, explaining that his personal Rockstar sources stated that there’s “Too a lot work, not sufficient time, and what seems to be an actual want from administration to keep away from brutal crunch.” Rockstar can’t correctly ship a recreation that can change the video gaming world if it slips again into outdated habits; whereas the delay is disappointing to these taking part in, it’s undeniably an enormous aid to these growing.
If you’re a writer, releasing your recreation concurrently Grand Theft Auto 6 is akin to throwing a bucket of water right into a tsunami. Discussing the previously scheduled ‘Fall 2025’ launch window, a report by The Game Business highlighted how such a nebulous date was affecting publishers worldwide. One studio boss referred to as Rockstar’s recreation “an enormous meteor and we’ll simply have to remain away from the blast zone,” whereas one other questioned “if we transfer out of 2025, what if Rockstar do, too?” (An unsurprisingly predictive fear). We even have the likes of EA CEO Andrew Wilson implicitly commenting on the sport’s looming shadow within the context of the brand new Battlefield, citing “some issues occurring within the yr which will trigger us to assume otherwise about our launch timing.”
However, enormous releases don’t all the time overshadow these round them. Despite launching concurrently Bethesda’s Oblivion remake, Kepler Interactive’s authentic RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 nonetheless offered over a million copies in simply three days, with senior portfolio supervisor Matt Handrahan even joking that it was the online game trade’s Barbenheimer second. It’s exhausting to imagine such a second can exist for Grand Theft Auto 6, after all, and so it goes unsaid that such a unusual concept won’t be a part of any writer’s marketing campaign plans. Don’t anticipate a Grand Theft Fable second in 2026.
Currently, it’s unclear to what extent the brand new May 26, 2026 launch date will shake up the plans of different publishers and builders. There are nonetheless many heavy-hitter titles which might be undated together with the likes of Fable, Gears of War: E-Day, EA’s new Battlefield title, Mass Effect non secular successor Exodus and extra. There will definitely be some builders now scrambling to alter their inner launch date plans, however the wider public might be none the wiser. However, this flag planting by Rockstar little doubt implies that builders and publishers will really feel extra assured in saying their launch plans to the world. But they could wish to maintain on a minute.
It appears most unlikely that this would be the ultimate date for Grand Theft Auto 6 for 2 causes. Both Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 have been topic to 2 date delays, with the primary delay being to the second quarter of the following yr, adopted by a second delay to the third quarter of that very same yr. Right now, Grand Theft Auto 6 is replicating that very same timeline, delayed from Fall 2025 to May 2026, so yet one more delay to October/November 2026 appears a fairly educated prediction.
That October/November window appears much more probably when you think about the potential for each Microsoft and Sony to create a brand new console bundle together with the crime sequel, which is able to certainly shoot up gross sales across the vacation interval. Sony offered 6.4 million PlayStation 4s throughout October – December 2014, greater than double the consoles they offered between April and September of that yr. Of course there would have been the basic Christmas enhance, however what else occurred in that time-frame? Grand Theft Auto 5 launched on PS4.
What may very well be the larger shock, although , is that Nintendo could also be one of many events most affected by this delay. Recently, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick pledged full support for the Switch 2, main followers to take a position about if Grand Theft Auto 6 may be eyeing a Switch 2 launch. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy’s Definitive Edition noticed a shock launch onto the Nintendo Switch, so there’s precedent for an grownup franchise on a usually family-friendly console. Many believed the Switch know-how wasn’t highly effective sufficient to run a recreation like Grand Theft Auto, nonetheless final yr modders launched a video displaying off an in-progress port of GTA 5 operating on Switch utilizing the sport’s leaked supply code. While it does appear unlikely that Nintendo would have factored Grand Theft Auto 6 into the Switch’s first-year success, there’s a transparent, sturdy relationship between writer Take-Two and Nintendo that shouldn’t be ignored. When wanting on the console market as a part of the general online game trade, Nintendo remains to be an enormous a part of that regardless of how a lot of an island they might appear. The Nintendo Switch was nonetheless host to an array of generation-defining video games together with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption, Metal Gear Solid, Crysis and extra. And with Cyberpunk 2077 arriving on Switch 2 at launch, full with its present gen-only Phantom Liberty enlargement, we shouldn’t ignore the potential for “miracle” ports.
What’s clear is that there’s a hell of loads driving on Grand Theft Auto 6. Many completely different head honchos of the online game trade, from studio heads to chief analysts, imagine that this generation-defining recreation would be the one to interrupt the trade’s progress stagnation. It’s exhausting to disclaim the worldwide feverish demand and anticipation for a recreation that has successfully been within the works for over a decade. There are impossibly excessive expectations on the groups at Rockstar Games to ship one thing that not solely single-handedly restores the online game trade again to its pre-pandemic progress, but in addition presents a completely new type of online game expertise that can grow to be the brand new benchmark for builders and publishers shifting ahead. Rockstar solely has one shot to get this proper – what’s six extra months after 13 years?
Sab Astley is a contract author who has written for IGN, Polygon, TotalFilm, Rolling Stone, Radio Times, and Metro UK.
