Failure to Announce GTA 6 Release Date Could Spell Disaster for Some, Analyst Warns

Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 6 is expected to be 2025’s biggest release, but the game still does not have a release date. The lack of a release date could make this a stressful time for some studios, according to Newzoo’s Ben Porter.

He told PC Gamer that because GTA 6 looms so large, the fate of other games and studios may depend on its release timing.

“If you’re a game company who’s holding its breath waiting for GTA 6 to get out, and then it gets delayed by three, four, five, six months, what do you do?” Porter said. “You either have to be able to launch into that big black hole that’s been left open now, or you have to extend your run rate by an additional six months–I’m certain some companies are going to tank as a result of that, right?”

Porter agreed with companies like Ubisoft in believing that GTA 6’s release may help “rejuvenate the market” overall. But at the same time, Porter doesn’t believe GTA 6’s launch will be “universally uplifting.”

“Everybody that we’re talking to, they’re ships trying to move out of the way of this big iceberg that is GTA 6,” Porter said. “Everybody’s trying to pull their game forward, push their game back–their strategy is to get out of the way. So if that’s what everybody’s behavior is, then how do you believe that this is going to rejuvenate the games industry?”

In related news, Greg Rice of Day of the Devs and PlayStation recently said there is a fear that GTA 6 is “sucking all the space out” of the industry, but this might not tell the whole story.

At the end of 2024, it was reported that many publishers were waiting to assign release dates to their own titles until Rockstar confirmed a date for GTA 6. As of yet, that hasn’t happened, and Rockstar has only said that GTA 6 will launch in Fall 2025 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Strauss Zelnick, who runs Rockstar owner Take-Two, has said he cannot rule out a delay. After all, every Rockstar release in the past decade has been delayed, so it would be a break from tradition if GTA 6 is not delayed.

Whenever it’s released, GTA 6 is expected to be a blockbuster success, with one company predicting 40 million in sales in the first year alone. The game is expected to come to PC at a later date, creating a second selling cycle for the open-world game.