Death Stranding 2: On the Beach director Hideo Kojima has offered insights into how the release of a major game might end up affecting other studios’ plans. In the latest episode of his radio show, Kojima compared the release of GTA 6 to that of a blockbuster movie like one in the Mission: Impossible franchise, where others in the industry might be wary of their releases getting ignored by the market when a big game comes out.
“For example some are saying GTA may or may not release in November,” said Kojima on his radio show, as translated by X user Genki_JPN. “As soon as it would be announced for November, everyone would move out of they way. For instance, if a new Mission Impossible movie were to release in May, others wouldn’t be able to compete with that so would move somewhere else.”
According to Kojima, even the release of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach had been affected. While the game got its June 26 release date during a special panel at SXSW 2025 earlier this year, he had originally wanted to release the game in September. This would have potentially created a conflict with the originally-planned release window of Grand Theft Auto 6, which was slated for Fall 2025. More recently, however, GTA 6 got a proper May 26, 2026 release date.
Kojima’s thoughts echo what we’ve heard others in the industry say. Back in March, a host of smaller publishers and developers spoke about having to plan the releases of their games in order to avoid being overshadowed by the release of Grand Theft Auto 6. One publisher, Dring, spoke about Rockstar’s titles always sucking “a lot of money and, more importantly, time of the market.”
A publisher from Europe also spoke about the uncertainty that came up because of the (at the time) unknown release date for GTA 6. “We don’t want to launch just before or just after the game,” they said. “If it arrives in late October, that means you either have to launch early – which a lot of people seem to be doing with the recent glut of summer release dates. Or go later, putting you up against the Black Friday sales.”
“If we move out to 2025, what if Rockstar do, too?” they continued. “Will we have time to push our game up? Or will we have to delay further? It’s stressful.”
Grand Theft Auto 6 recently got a new trailer that showcased more of its main setting of Vice City, as well as its dual protagonists Jason and Lucia. While we didn’t get much in the way of gameplay in the latest trailer, we did get to see quite a bit of Vice City thanks to clips of various out-of-context cutscenes that made up the whole trailer.
GTA 6 is currently in the works on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Rockstar had announced the title’s delayed release date of May 26, 2026 earlier this month, stating that it needed more time to work on the game. Rumours indicated, however, that the decision to delay the game was made in order to avoid crunch at the studio.
