Grand Theft Auto VI is coming this year, and it’s expected to be a huge success with 40 million sales and $3 billion in revenue in its first year. Its release looms so large that some publishers are apparently considering delaying their games to avoid a clash.
Three anonymous “major” video game publishers told The Game Business that they are “ready” to delay upcoming projects due to GTA 6. The report didn’t say what these companies are, but an anonymous boss of “one of the world’s biggest game publishers” told TGB that Rockstar’s releases “always suck a lot of money, and more importantly, time out of the market.”
“We don’t want to be anywhere near that. We are working up multiple different plans for our titles,” the anonymous executive said. Another unnamed senior executive at a publisher said even without GTA 6 coming to market, it’s become “immensely difficult to find free time for new games to shine. Time is the real scarcity for us, not money. It’s tough out there.”
Two anonymous developers of “top 10 live-service games” told TBG that they are not planning any major updates to their titles around the time of GTA 6’s launch.
One unnamed studio boss told TGB that GTA 6 is “basically a huge meteor and we will just stay clear of the blast zone.” A different developer said there is “no point” in trying to compete with GTA 6 and it might be smarter to “prepare to win players back once the excitement has started to die down.”
GTA 6 is officially set for release in Fall 2025 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, but every Rockstar Games release going back a decade has been delayed, so it would be notable if GTA 6 is not delayed. Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has acknowledged that GTA 6 could be delayed.
Publishers being wary of launching near GTA 6 is not a new concern. 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. More recently, an analyst said some companies might not survive if they don’t properly plan their launch timings around GTA 6.
GTA 6 coming to market could also help lift the overall video game industry, as a game of that magnitude is expected to draw in new or lapsed players. Ubisoft, for its part, said it sees its own game sales grow when a big game like a new entry in the GTA series comes out.
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.
GTA 6 is the first new entry in main series since 2013’s GTA V. That game has enjoyed enormous success, selling more than 200 million copies and generating countless additional revenue from GTA Online.