Grand Theft Auto 6’s Delay Just Affected the Entire Video Game Industry

Grand Theft Auto fans, there is some good news and some bad news. The good news is finally, after all these years, we have an actual day-and-date release time for GTA 6. The bad news? It’s around six months later than the ‘Fall 2025’ we were originally told. To many in the video game industry, the new date of May 26, 2026 is a welcome sigh of relief – dozens of publishers and developers of all sizes were fearful of meticulously planning their release campaigns only to later discover they’d be releasing in the same month as this herculean title. However, there are many undated heavy-hitters due to land next year that will now be frantically searching for a new date.

What’s clear is that Grand Theft Auto 6 has found itself touted as the lynchpin to the video game industry’s near future – any news on the project’s development has a huge ripple effect. So how does a six-month delay reflect a significant change in Rockstar’s corporate culture, call into question this year’s console market revenue, and potentially affect the Switch 2?

Last year, the video game industry’s total revenue hit $184.3 billion, a 0.2% increase from 2023. Contradicting analyst predictions of a slight downturn, it prompted a sigh of relief for video game manufacturers and publishers. However, in the console space, revenue dropped by 1% – and we’re already seeing the consequences. A downturn of console hardware sales combined with a heightening technology tariff war has forced prices up for both Microsoft and Sony. This generation needs a definitive console-shifting title – it needs Grand Theft Auto 6.

Research groups estimate the crime sequel to make $1 billion off pre-orders alone and $3.2 billion in its first year of launch. It took Grand Theft Auto 5 three days to make $1 billion, could it take Grand Theft Auto 6 just 24 hours? Circana analyst Mat Piscatella believes that “there’s probably never been a more important thing to ever release in the industry,” because the game’s impact will help define our understanding of the video game industry’s potential growth over the next decade. There are rumors that it could be the first-ever $100 video game, making it a new watershed moment for the industry. That new benchmark could give the industry the shot-in-the-arm growth many analysts say it needs. However, it’s also possible Grand Theft Auto 6 is simply too much of a monolithic outlier to create progress outside of itself.

In 2018, Rockstar Games had a publicity crisis on its hands. Reports of 100 hour weeks alongside formerly mandatory overtime whilst developing Red Dead Redemption 2, plus former and current employees speaking on intense crunch periods stemming from Grand Theft Auto 4, painted a stark picture of one of gaming’s titans. Since then, the company has reportedly undergone an internal reinvention of sorts – according to a Bloomberg report, contractors being converted to full-time employees and a ‘flexitime’ policy enabling workers to take time off for every hour of overtime worked are just two of the many more compassionate policies enacted. Earlier this year, Rockstar’s old reputation threatened to rear its head as staff were made to return to the office five days a week to close out Grand Theft Auto 6’s development – a move which makes the reason behind the delay pretty clear. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier confirmed as much on BlueSky, explaining that his own Rockstar sources said that there’s “Too much work, not enough time, and what appears to be a real desire from management to avoid brutal crunch.” Rockstar can’t properly deliver a game that will change the video gaming world if it slips back into old habits; while the delay is disappointing to those playing, it’s undeniably a huge relief to those developing.

If you’re a publisher, releasing your game at the same time as Grand Theft Auto 6 is akin to throwing a bucket of water into a tsunami. Discussing the formerly scheduled ‘Fall 2025’ release window, a report by The Game Business highlighted how such a nebulous date was affecting publishers worldwide. One studio boss called Rockstar’s game “a huge meteor and we’ll just have to stay clear of the blast zone,” while another questioned “if we move out of 2025, what if Rockstar do, too?” (An unsurprisingly predictive worry). We even have the likes of EA CEO Andrew Wilson implicitly commenting on the game’s looming shadow in the context of the new Battlefield, citing “some things happening in the year that may cause us to think differently about our launch timing.”

However, huge releases don’t always overshadow those around them. Despite launching at the same time as Bethesda’s Oblivion remake, Kepler Interactive’s original RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 still sold over one million copies in just three days, with senior portfolio manager Matt Handrahan even joking that it was the video game industry’s Barbenheimer moment. It’s hard to believe such a moment can exist for Grand Theft Auto 6, of course, and so it goes unsaid that such a quirky idea will not be part of any publisher’s campaign plans. Don’t expect a Grand Theft Fable moment in 2026.

Currently, it’s unclear to what extent the new May 26, 2026 release date will shake up the plans of other publishers and developers. There are still many heavy-hitter titles that are undated including the likes of Fable, Gears of War: E-Day, EA’s new Battlefield title, Mass Effect spiritual successor Exodus and more. There will certainly be some developers now scrambling to change their internal release date plans, but the wider public will be none the wiser. However, this flag planting by Rockstar no doubt means that developers and publishers will feel more confident in announcing their release plans to the world. But they might want to hold on a minute.

It seems very unlikely that this will be the final date for Grand Theft Auto 6 for two reasons. Both Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 were subject to two date delays, with the first delay being to the second quarter of the next year, followed by a second delay to the third quarter of that same year. Right now, Grand Theft Auto 6 is replicating that exact same timeline, delayed from Fall 2025 to May 2026, so one more delay to October/November 2026 seems a reasonably educated prediction.

That October/November window seems even more likely when you consider the potential for both Microsoft and Sony to create a new console bundle including the crime sequel, which will surely shoot up sales around the holiday period. Sony sold 6.4 million PlayStation 4s during October - December 2014, more than double the consoles they sold between April and September of that year. Of course there would have been the classic Christmas boost, but what else happened in that time frame? Grand Theft Auto 5 released on PS4.

What could be the bigger surprise, though , is that Nintendo may be one of the parties most affected by this delay. Recently, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick pledged full support for the Switch 2, leading fans to speculate about if Grand Theft Auto 6 may also be eyeing a Switch 2 launch. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy’s Definitive Edition saw a surprise launch onto the Nintendo Switch, so there’s precedent for an adult franchise on a typically family-friendly console. Many believed the Switch technology wasn’t powerful enough to run a game like Grand Theft Auto, however last year modders released a video showing off an in-progress port of GTA 5 running on Switch using the game’s leaked source code. While it does seem unlikely that Nintendo would have factored Grand Theft Auto 6 into the Switch’s first-year success, there’s a clear, strong relationship between publisher Take-Two and Nintendo that shouldn’t be ignored. When looking at the console market as part of the overall video game industry, Nintendo is still a huge part of that no matter how much of an island they may seem. The Nintendo Switch was still host to an array of generation-defining games including The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption, Metal Gear Solid, Crysis and more. And with Cyberpunk 2077 arriving on Switch 2 at launch, complete with its current gen-only Phantom Liberty expansion, we shouldn’t ignore the potential for “miracle” ports.

What’s clear is that there is a hell of a lot riding on Grand Theft Auto 6. Many different head honchos of the video game industry, from studio heads to chief analysts, believe that this generation-defining game will be the one to break the industry’s growth stagnation. It’s hard to deny the global feverish demand and anticipation for a game that has effectively been in the works for over a decade. There are impossibly high expectations on the teams at Rockstar Games to deliver something that not only single-handedly restores the video game industry back to its pre-pandemic growth, but also presents an entirely new kind of video game experience that will become the new benchmark for developers and publishers moving forward. Rockstar only has one shot to get this right – what’s six more months after 13 years?

Sab Astley is a freelance writer who has written for IGN, Polygon, TotalFilm, Rolling Stone, Radio Times, and Metro UK.