Well there’s good news and bad news, I’m afraid.
The good news is we’ve gotten just a tiny bit closer to the actual release date of Rockstar Games’ highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI. We already knew that Rockstar was planning to release the game sometime in 2025, but that window has shrunk to Fall of 2025, parent company Take-Two Interactive revealed in an earnings call today.
The bad news is that Take-Two posted a massive $2.9 billion loss in its fourth fiscal quarter (Jan 1st – March 31st 2024), far exceeding the company’s most recent guidance of $170 – $153 million in losses. The vast majority of the quarterly loss was a $2.18 billion goodwill charge.
The company declined to narrow down the GTA VI release date with CEO Strauss Zelnick telling Variety: “I think we’re going to leave it there for now. “That [announcement] will come from Rockstar and be consistent with the way they are marketing the title.” When asked if he was concerned that the game could be delayed, Zelnick told IGN, “We do feel highly confident that we’ll deliver [Grand Theft Auto VI] in fall of 2025.”
Take-Two is the parent company of both Rockstar and 2K Games which publishes the popular 2K sports games. Take-Two is also poised to acquire Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment.
The GTA VI trailer, released last December, instantly became the most-watched YouTube video of all time. It currently has over 190 million views and over 11 million likes. You can watch it below:
Rockstar has only published one new game since the launch of GTA V and GTA Online. Red Dead Redemption 2 was a massive hit but never had quite the appeal or staying power of Grand Theft Auto. Red Dead Online was popular but no longer receives major updates as Rockstar discontinued support for the game in 2022 (the servers are still running, however).
No single-player DLC was ever released for GTA V which remains one of modern gaming’s major disappointments. Plenty of updates were released for GTA Online, however, which continues to print money to this day.
GTA V released back in 2013 to massive sales and rave reviews. A Fall 2025 release date means there will have been a 12 year gap between games (not counting ports to various consoles and mobile) making Rockstar’s pace somewhat akin to Game Of Thrones author George R.R. Martin’s (though I doubt Winds of Winter will be out by 2025). This 12-year gap is striking when you look at the previous 12 years. Between 2001 and 2013 Rockstar released (just in the Grand Theft Auto franchise):
- GTA 3 (2001)
- Vice City (2002)
- GTA: Advance (2004)
- San Andreas (2004)
- GTA: The Trilogy (2005)
- GTA: Liberty City Stories (2005)
- GTA: Vice City Stories (2006)
- GTA IV (2008)
- GTA IV: The Lost and the Damned (2009)
- GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony (2009)
- GTA: Chinatown Wars (2009)
And then GTA V in 2013. The GTA: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition released in 2021. Hopefully GTA VI isn’t delayed into 2026, but I’m not holding my breath.
