Remember when the year started and we were all bright-eyed, optimistic and hopeful? There were concerns over just how packed 2025 could be, but with three great releases in January alone (Citizen Sleeper 2 fans, rise up), it seemed like things would work out. Of course, then the unreasonable, the unthinkable, the inconceivable happened: Grand Theft Auto 6 got delayed to next year in May.
Okay, so maybe it isn’t that inconceivable, and the fact that Rockstar dropped a new trailer full of morsels on what to expect had us salivating. Surely the year would pass without further delays, and surely we would learn more as the months passed. Well, November arrived, and far from kicking off its marketing cycle, another delay was announced, this time to November 19th in 2026.
There was the usual PR-speak from Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick – how he’s highly confident in this new release date, how it was announced early for the sake of marketing, and to provide “as much certainty as possible” to players. He even said that it would deliver an “unrivalled blockbuster entertainment experience,” months after claiming it would be the “best thing ever seen in entertainment.”
And thus, the polls began. Would Grand Theft Auto 6 be delayed again? It certainly seemed possible – look at Cyberpunk 2077 or, heck, all the other games from this year that suffered numerous delays. If those projects took time to come together, why not the once-and-future “best thing ever seen in entertainment?”
That’s not including all the rumors, which saw a fresh wave of validation. “Of course it’s taking so long,” they said. “Have you not seen all the reports about development reboots and cut content?” The recent firings at Rockstar also didn’t help, especially reports of morale absolutely cratering at the studio.
Here’s the thing, though: I’m expecting another delay, this time to 2027. Now, before you get the bricks, hear me out.
If we’re believing rumors, then it’s worth noting the one about it being content-complete, as reported by Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson. As anyone aware of games of this scale, polish can be just as vital, if not more so, in ensuring things work flawlessly. Henderson also put it best: “If there’s a single glitch, like somebody glitches through the door or something like that, people are going to run with it, and it’s going to be a bad look for them.”
You could argue, successfully at that, how Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 had bugs despite their protracted development cycles. And while they’re known for their incredible characters, stunning environments, freedom of choice and unforgettable narratives, people really underestimate how much goes into ensuring everything works without a hitch.
Those O’Driscolls in that stagecoach robbery or the veiled threats that can turn into a shootout? The woman in white who lures you into an ambush with other Night Folk? Heck, even just the random NPCs wandering around in Los Santos, living out their lives, taking notice of the player, reacting accordingly, and either carrying on or screaming frantically as you go on a massacre. It’s all so elegant in practice, but dozens of systems are working in tandem that took years to perfect.
And there is so much that can go wrong. Animation glitches, mission blockers, audio quality, pop-in, frame rate drops – the list is endless. The scale of Rockstar’s games only amplifies this.
So clearly, it should take all the time in the world to ensure things are polished, hence another delay? Well, it’s not just that. I’m not going to bring up all the other games coming next year either, much as it would be nice to have time to spend on Marvel’s Wolverine or catch up on my backlog, which is stretching years-long at this point. And no, this isn’t about The Game Awards and how it could miss nominations (because let’s be real – if it’s that good, it’s a shoo-in for the following year).
Instead, it’s because Grand Theft Auto 6 is an event unto itself. Even those who deny the hype will agree that it’s one of the biggest media franchises in the world. Analysts estimate that it will generate $10 billion in its lifetime, and that’s without even knowing how much it will cost. But above all else, it’s because games like this, especially in an industry with multiple massive triple-A titles every year, aren’t a common occurrence. They’re the top 0.1 percent among the top – the crème of the crop – and Rockstar knows this.
The studio’s bread and butter is delivering these experiences and not only shattering short and long-term records, but setting a standard for the industry as a whole. Not a standard that most would even think about attempting to match – go ahead and name the number of open-world games that could easily match up to Red Dead Redemption 2 in the past seven years – but a standard all the same. And while that’s undoubtedly for the sake of shareholders and upper management, it’s also because the studio isn’t churning these out at a rapid pace.
In this “We’ll fix it in post-launch” industry where revamps, overhauls, roadmaps, free DLC (and whole expansions) are commonplace, you would think Rockstar would just ship it and worry later. There are plenty of logical reasons it won’t, of course. If loose lips sink ships, so too can bad word of mouth and negative press impact a game’s long-term success. Grand Theft Auto 6 may well sell its tens of millions in this scenario, but what about years later, when Take-Two wants to brag about the hundreds of millions? What about even further beyond, when the team needs to justify spending all that time and money to ship another gargantuan project? Would anything less than perfection help justify it? You’re only ever as good as your last project, after all.
Granted, the official state of development is a mystery. It could very well be in the worst imaginable shape, even with all content complete, and Rockstar desperately needs that extra time for polish. It could also be a case, as Henderson noted, of ensuring every little bit is polished to perfection.
Either way, in terms of Rockstar’s big projects, Grand Theft Auto 6 could be it for a long time. Remember: Grand Theft Auto 5 first launched in 2013. Even if Red Dead Redemption 2 arrived a mere five years later, this is on a completely different scale from either release, at least judging by the trailers seen thus far. Its visual fidelity, NPC simulations, weather conditions, emergent gameplay, and more are simply on another level, and that’s not even factoring in Grand Theft Auto Online.
For all intents and purposes, this will be it for the next decade of the series, and when you really think about it, worries like which game is launching around the same time or how many more millions need to be spent on delays seem insignificant. Even as it undoubtedly grows over time, Rockstar knows that the first time you’ll experience it is the most important. To that end, a delay to 2027, if absolutely necessary, would feel trivial in retrospect. Here’s hoping that it doesn’t reach that point.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.