I’ll give you the bad news first: Grand Theft Auto VI got delayed by roughly six months, from Fall 2025 to May 26, 2026.
And now for the good news: Grand Theft Auto VI got delayed by roughly six months, from Fall 2025 to May 26, 2026.Video game delays are always a mixed bag from the perspective of potential players. We want to get our grubby hands on huge games as soon as possible. But we also want those games to be great. Unfortunately, those desires frequently conflict—and when they do, a delay often results. In such situations, we can, of course, mourn the theoretical games that we dreamed would be both released soon and completely polished. But in retrospect, those beautiful visions were merely mirages. In the case of GTA VI, the real release date behind the curtain may have been clear for some time internally.
GTA VI’s slip is simultaneously seismic and unsurprising. The game was the most anticipated release of the year in any entertainment medium—but its 2025 toehold was always seen as tenuous. Plenty of previous reporting suggested that this slide was a possibility, despite repeated assurances from the CEO of Take-Two, GTA developer Rockstar Games’ parent company. Not that reporting was really required: Expecting delays is the default stance for gamers. Grand Theft Auto IV and GTA V also suffered postponements after their first release targets were announced, so VI is just the latest in a long line. On Polymarket, the odds of a GTA VI delay into 2026 had been hovering around 30 percent before Rockstar’s Friday morning announcement, which cited a need for “extra time to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve.”
If this new, later date holds, then the game will arrive almost 13 years after its predecessor—and it will likely set sales and revenue records, just as it would’ve this fall and just as it probably would if Rockstar were to say “Psych!” and surprise release it tomorrow. Leaks couldn’t derail the GTA juggernaut, and neither will a longer wait. Once you’ve waited 12 years for a sequel, what’s another six months? This just means more time to raise the game’s wanted level.Well, no—that’s not all it means. For most people in the market for this megagame, the delay doesn’t change that much: They’ll simply play other things while they keep pining for Rockstar’s fictional Florida. But there are some wider-ranging ripple effects. Let’s briefly lay out the winners and losers.
Winners
Players: There’s a gaming maxim often erroneously attributed to Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto that says something along the lines of, “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” In the long run, it’s better to get a fully baked game later than planned than a half-baked game on time. A delay doesn’t guarantee a great game, or even a greatly improved one, but pushing out a much-hyped game before it’s ready could guarantee disappointment (if not a fiasco). I vaguely remember feeling frustrated by long-ago game delays, but I much more clearly remember being satisfied by delayed games that used the extra time to fulfill their potential. Plus, it’s possible that the delay will enable Rockstar to release the game on PCs as well as consoles concurrently, instead of making PC players wait. And in the interim, you’ll have more time to whittle away at your backlog of good games you haven’t gotten around to.
Rockstar’s developers: Granted, postponing a windfall could potentially impact job security in an industry that’s already prone to upheaval and layoffs. But assuming Rockstar retains all the programming geese who are laying its golden egg, this reprieve could build in breathers that reduce crunch—a staple of past Rockstar projects that the studio has vowed to avoid in favor of more humane methods. And if crunch is really reduced, then gamers won’t have to feel conflicted about playing a game that imposed a steep price on its makers.
Frustrated rumor readers: For the first time, GTA VI has a hard date. Not that hard dates can’t get shifted too—GTA IV had a hard pre-delay date that suddenly softened—but for the foreseeable future, we can stop wasting time reading tea leaves, moon phases, and other games’ release dates to forecast when GTA could come out. Not that everyone will. After all, we don’t yet know when the next details and trailer will drop! Better check anyway …
Nintendo: Entering 2025, two major gaming-related launches had been announced: GTA VI, and Switch 2. Now the Switch 2 stands alone, a Bananza for Nintendo. It’s not as if Nintendo would have had trouble moving as many Switch 2s as it could manufacture, even with GTA hogging holiday dollars. But now the Switch 2 will have the whole mainstream, crossover spotlight to itself. Nintendo could sell more software than it would’ve otherwise, depending on what first-party surprises the legendary game maker may have in store as stocking stuffers.
Indie GOTY contenders: The two top-reviewed titles of 2025 are indie, debut games that came out in April: turn-based RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and puzzler-roguelite Blue Prince. There’s ample competition for year-end awards already—including hits such as Split Fiction, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II—and plenty of time for other contenders (Ghost of Yōtei, Death Stranding 2, Elden Ring Nightreign, The Outer Worlds 2, Mario Kart World, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond) to emerge. But removing Rockstar’s 800-pound gorilla from the calendar (while Nintendo’s runs rampant) can only up the underdogs’ odds. An indie game has never won Game of the Year at the Game Awards, but Clair Obscur and Blue Prince may well be the leaders in the clubhouse.
Other games slated for late this year: Up until now, the release calendar for this holiday season has looked a little light, which is what happens when everyone’s waiting to see when Rockstar will decide to suck up all the spending in the industry. Now that GTA VI has become a 2026 problem, we may see more games nail down late-2025 dates instead of considering delays of their own. (And some previously announced dates may move around.) Ghost of Yōtei, Bungie’s Marathon, the next Call of Duty, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Electronic Arts’ next Battlefield or skate. installments, etc., could reap the rewards of non-GTA oxygen being restored to the room.
Losers
Players: No, I’m not going to pretend that a delay doesn’t also sting, even if it will work out down the road. I’d prefer to play and discuss GTA VI this year, not next year. Gimme my game and my gratification now! I WANT it! OK, good. Got that out of my system. However, there’s one more possible downside. The $60 game has given way to the $70 game during the current console generation, but thanks in part to the Switch 2’s arrival, the $80 game is starting to take over. With several more months for those price hikes to normalize before GTA VI arrives, Rockstar could be emboldened to break through the $80 ceiling too. That price tag might backfire for some games, given the multitude of less expensive options available, but GTA VI could name its price and find millions of people willing to pay.
Take-Two shareholders: Won’t anyone think of the corporate parent? Clearly, the delay pushes back an unprecedented payday, but Take-Two isn’t bereft of big games. 2K, another Take-Two subsidiary, will be publishing a trio of games with well-known names by the end of September: Mafia: The Old Country, Borderlands 4, and NBA 2K26. Take-Two put out a press release that promised record net bookings in both of the next two fiscal years, even though GTA VI is sliding from the first to the second. Investors seem somewhat mollified: Take-Two’s stock price was nearly down by a double-digit percentage early on Friday, but it recovered to more “modest loss” territory later in the day.
It doesn’t hurt that Grand Theft Auto V, the second-bestselling game of all time, remains a money machine, which helps explain why Rockstar has taken its sweet time with the sequel. Through early April, GTA V was the 11th-bestselling game of 2025 in the U.S. (Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 ranked 15th.) Throw in healthy streaming stats and robust revenue from GTA Online, and there’s still a lot of coin coming into the GTA coffers, even without a new blockbuster.
Short-term industry revenue: Amid the mess of Trump’s tariffs, console prices have recently increased, at a point in their life cycles when price cuts could be considered under less chaotic circumstances. (Microsoft has raised Xbox prices in the U.S.; Sony has so far upped the price of its PlayStations in other markets.) Console sales had been plummeting even prior to the price hikes (along with overall spending on games). Maybe Rockstar is seeking to avoid some of the tariff and recession-related uncertainty by keeping its powder dry until 2026—though if the worst projections come to pass, the effects of a faltering economy will be felt next year too, and consoles could cost just as much, if not more.The industry had hoped that GTA VI would convince some holdouts from the PS4 and Xbox One generation to take the plunge on new hardware from Microsoft and Sony, even as Nintendo sold through its stock of Switch 2s. Now the former scenario is off the table until next year, by which point even those newer systems could be long enough in the tooth that some potential purchasers will decide to play on PC and sit out this generation entirely. And although some gamers may put their GTA funds toward other games this fall, some may simply save or direct their dollars elsewhere.e.
Anything else slated for next spring: If you were planning to release a video game not named Grand Theft Auto next May or June, a giant, GTA-style Molotov cocktail just got thrown in your product’s direction. The same goes for any media, for that matter: Avengers: Doomsday (May 1, 2026) is probably clear to proceed, but I doubt Disney is thrilled about GTA horning in on The Mandalorian & Grogu’s turf (May 22). There aren’t many pieces of IP that could give Grogu a run for his money, but GTA will have right of way on its chosen day.
