Grand Theft Auto 6 is still on schedule to release on Fall 2025.
As reported by RockstarIntel, Take-Two Interactive just had its Q1 presentation, and this release date was reconfirmed in the presentation slides.
While Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick did not talk about Grand Theft Auto 6‘s release, he did tout that Grand Theft Auto V continues to sell well, particularly because of the recent release of its latest DLC, Bottom Dollar Bounties.
Grand Theft Auto Online also continues to do well, but the game has stopped its incredible trend of selling five million copies every month. That sounds like a really unreasonable metric, but somehow, Grand Theft Auto V has managed to achieve it for the past few years.
It certainly seems that Rockstar has said everything that they would want to before Grand Theft Auto 6’s release. A leak of an early build of the game a few years ago led to some baseless speculation that development was not going well.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, the poor release of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, Rockstar is expected to go on full cylinders for Grand Theft Auto 6. Not only is it expected to be the biggest release of 2025, it’s also expected to come with an updated version of Grand Theft Auto Online, which is currently one of the biggest and most successful active live service games.
Grand Theft Auto 6 certainly faces the most unreasonable of expectations. Grand Theft Auto V was originally released all the way back in 2013, and has gone through three console generations. Their Grand Theft Auto Online community followed them through each generation for over a decade, but today the game definitely shows its age, even more than the Nintendo Switch.
Some investors had apparently pinned their hopes on Grand Theft Auto 6 revitalizing the video game industry, and in particular, that it could drive gamers to buy the PlayStation 5 Pro. There’s even a hope that gamers who are still on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One would make that jump to the upgraded hardware.
While Rockstar has designated Grand Theft Auto 6’s launch platforms for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S only, that’s still a lot to hope on a single game. Even a title as big as Grand Theft Auto 6 may not be compelling enough to get consumers to spend on new consoles.
But there are definitely other factors at play as well. By the time Grand Theft Auto 6 arrives, the Nintendo’s next console may have already launched, and alongside it will be a full slate of big AAAs, including Avowed, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. We certainly hope that the industry will do its bouncing back before Grand Theft Auto 6 even releases, and so it won’t all be dependent on if people will buy the game or get new consoles for it.
