It’s abundantly clear that when Grand Theft Auto 6 launches, it will become one of the biggest games of all time in terms of scope alone. And then, no doubt, in terms of sales as those pour in at release and over the coming years.
As such, publishers are scared. Scared that if they drop their own releases in the fall when GTA 6 reportedly hits, whatever the game, they’ll be nuked off the map. Despite being a quarter through the year with fall looming, you have heard very, very few confirmed dates around that time.
The Game Business has a new report speaking to various industry figures about the idea that many are holding their breath for GTA 6, or running away from the fall altogether.
“Rockstar games always suck a lot of money and, more importantly, time out of the market,” the boss of one of the world’s biggest game publishers told The Game Business. “We don’t want to be anywhere near that. We are working up multiple different plans for our titles.”
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This has been said publicly as well, like how EA may push Battlefield back in order to avoid GTA. Even live services games are not planning to roll out major updates during this time period.
But all of this is playing chicken. For fall, you don’t want to be right before or right after the GTA 6 release, but a few weeks before? A few weeks after? Maybe that works. But with no one knowing a date, all anyone can do is wait for Rockstar to start talking.
The other question mark, however, is whether GTA 6 actually makes it out in 2025 without a delay. Rockstar has repeatedly told investors it will hit that window, and yet we see far smaller AAA games delay past stated windows incredibly often, and it simply seems unlikely GTA 6 could avoid that. At the very least, it may push to the final fiscal quarter in early 2026, which at least would still be in before the end of the fiscal year, and wouldn’t be the biggest of deal for those baited-breath investors.
That would create a bizarre situation where games would either be stuck now avoiding a different window, or scrambling to actually launch earlier in the 2025 holiday season like they were supposed to. It would be “nice” of Rockstar to give an actual date six months early here, but it likely doesn’t care about aiding its competition, so it’s going to do whatever it wants, as it always does.
Read the full story on The Game Business here.
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