There are plenty of things to be worried about in the gaming space right now. EA is soon to be owned by Saudi Arabia. Microsoft still hasn’t figured out how to do right by gamers, and keeps making excuses when its terrible plans fail. People are hating on the Nintendo Switch 2 and its gaming lineup for no good reason, and so on. Then, there are the issues surrounding GTA 6 and whether it’ll actually launch in 2026 as they promised multiple times over. For some fans, they’re fine with either believing in Rockstar Games or being patient to “let them cook.”
However, for some of us on the journalistic side of things, the belief that continues to grow is that the game won’t release until 2027, despite the new release date being November 2026. This happened over on GameRant, where someone not only spelled out all the reasons that it likely would go down that way, but that they would “eat their hat” if the current release date is upheld.
So, what was their logic? To be fair, they had quite a few elements and points that make sense. For example, they pointed out that we still don’t really know when GTA 6 started development. Sure, Rockstar Games claims that it started “in earnest” in 2020, but that doesn’t really sound right, now does it? When you add the fact that the team has clearly been updating and upgrading the game and its visuals, among other things, over the last 5+ years, you get the sense that this will take even longer to get done.
To that end, the writer cited how, while Rockstar Games has over 2000 employees, it still takes them a LONG time to get games done, and that they’re not afraid to use “crunch,” even though the practice is frowned upon.
Adding to that, they rightly pointed out that when it came to the previous release date announcement of May 2026, which many were hyped for, the literal CEO of Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar’s publisher and owner, stated that he had a strong “level of conviction” about hitting that release date…and then it got delayed just a few months later.
As if all of that isn’t enough, the piece highlighted correctly that we still haven’t seen true gameplay from the title! Both trailers have been about the game’s campaign and main characters, nothing more.
When you add all that together, you can see why many are skeptical about when the game will come out.
