It was the news that video gamers around the world were dreading: Grand Theft Auto VI was being delayed. The long-awaited sequel was due to launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in the Fall of 2025, but earlier this month, Rockstar Games announced that its crime epic will now launch on May 26 next year.
“With every game we have released, the goal has always been to try and exceed your expectations and Grand Theft Auto VI is no exception” Rockstar said in its statement. It added that it needed “extra time to deliver at the level and quality you expect and deserve”.
Grand Theft Auto VI follows on from GTA V which has become one of the best-selling games of all time since it was released in 2013. It’s sold more than 200 million copies, but this sixth instalment is set to dramatically surpass its predecessor and have a wider impact on the entertainment industry.
Within its first year, GTA VI is projected to earn $3 billion. A billion of that will come from pre-orders alone, according to research from DFC Intelligence, as reported in the Financial Times last year.
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However, the delay means that the games industry will miss out on $2.7 billion in revenue, according to a report by Ampere Analysis, a data and analytics company based in London. It is believed that the loss will come from a downturn in console sales. GTA VI’s release is predicted to act as a catalyst for many casual gamers to upgrade their hardware by purchasing current generation systems, like a PlayStation 5, but now many may wait until next year.
Chris Hewish, chief strategy officer at Xsolla, a financial technology company in Los Angeles says that GTA VI’s Fall release would have actually truncated its impact on the games industry in 2025 anyway. “The projection is a big number, but the industry is much larger than that. The delay creates a lot of opportunities for other developers to move into that [Fall]
release window now. I don’t think it’ll be a big negative hit on the industry overall” he says.
Ampere forecasts that the games industry will still grow by one percent this year, despite GTA VI’s move. For the first time, gaming will generate just over $200 billion ($201.3, precisely) while Rockstar’s game will trigger a growth of 2.2 percent in 2026.
“The demand from people to play games hasn’t diminished just because Grand Theft Auto has moved to next year” Hewish explains. “We may see more people acquire a Switch 2 now instead and buy more games on that platform than they would have otherwise” he says.
Nintendo’s new console, the Switch 2, is going to be released on June 5 and it will sell 15 million units within its first year, according to Nintendo’s president, Shuntaro Furukawa.
Hewish believes that the games industry will feel the impact of GTA VI’s delay the most in 2026. He explains that some publishers may now try to move the release date of their game forward from next year to the Fall of 2025 to capitalise on the space left behind by Rockstar. “This will have an impact on the developers , especially if launch dates are moved into this year. Now [developers] may have to crunch throughout the summer. That may be the untold story here; the impact on the teams themselves” he says.
The delay has not dampened the world’s appetite for GTA VI, however. After announcing the new release date, Rockstar revealed its second trailer for the game. Within days, it had been viewed over 475 million times across various platforms across the internet. As it stands, it’s been watched 113 million times on YouTube alone.
