Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has spoken to investors and several news outlets about its earnings report as of late and has information to share as we head into the final stretch before the release of Grand Theft Auto 6.
And we do know what that is now, for sure, no more last-minute delays, no more pushing to a new year. This is it.
When is the GTA 6 Release Date?
The date that Zelnick has confirmed remains November 19, 2026, a week before Black Friday, in which video game hardware may go on sale. GTA 6 is only coming to consoles, consoles that have seen dramatic price increases over the past year. The most powerful console that can run GTA 6 is the PS5 Pro, now priced at $900.
When is the GTA 6 Preorder Date?
There were confirmed reports that Best Buy sent a mass email to its creator partners about a GTA 6 preorder event scheduled for last Monday, but it did not happen, and we still do not have a date for preorders. Many are hoping that a third trailer will go out the same day. The third GTA 5 trailer hit about 5 months before its release date, and we are now around 6 months until the GTA 6 release date. Here’s what Zelnick told IGN about GTA 6 marketing going forward through a metaphor involving Tom Cruise:
“So if you put out a sequel to Mission: Impossible, trust me, the studio is still going to spend a whole lot of money marketing that title, even though we kind of know what we’re going to get and we know we’re going to see Tom Cruise, and we’re thrilled that we will. Marketing is still an important part of any entertainment release.”
Marketing is supposed to kick off this summer, and given that we are a week away from June, that is likely when the definition of summer starts.
Take-Two has said it expects to earn $8-$8.2 billion in revenue during the 2027 fiscal year, which would be 20% over the previous year. That seems somewhat conservative, given that GTA 5 earned $800 million its first day of release alone, and there is no one who believes GTA 6 will have a smaller launch. There are four full months of GTA 6 sales until the end of that fiscal year. So we’ll see.
How Much Will GTA 6 Cost?
There remains a consistent question that has not been answered by Take-Two or Zelnick directly. The idea is that GTA 6 is destined to be the biggest entertainment (or consumer product) launch in history; it could get away with bucking the industry standard $70 price and move that up to $80 more. Only a small handful of games have done that, like Nintendo with Mario Kart World, but due to player pushback, almost no one else has dared to go that high. What Zelnick has said about this does not seem like an explicit setup for a price hike, however. Here he is speaking at IICON about how much game costs and scope have increased in time, plus the factor of inflation:
“If you look at it through that lens, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But that isn’t the lens through which we look. Instead, we look at… how do we deliver something amazing, and how do we make sure that what people pay for it feels very reasonable.”
Through all this, there is no new information about the game’s content beyond what we already know. Jason, Lucia, its cast of characters that have been revealed in dozens of screenshots and two trailers. The sprawling setting of Vice City and the state of Leonida. But that’s what fans hope to see expanded in future trailers and other marketing. Not that they need much more information to be sold on the product, of course.
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