Thunderbolt in the world of video games: the release of the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA VI), hitherto announced for the fall of 2025, has been shifted on May 26, 2026, its creators explaining wanting to refine before its launch. “We hope you will understand that we need more time to bring you the level of quality you are waiting for,” said his publisher, Rockstar Games, in a statement published on Friday. Take-Two Interactive, his parent company, plunged some 7% to Wall Street after the announcement.
The stake is great for the company, while GTA V There remains one of the most popular titles, twelve years after its marketing. Since its initial launch on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, it has been adapted to all new consoles of Sony and Microsoft as well as on PC, thus extending its lifespan and sales, which now exceed 200 million copies.
In this new part, for which few details have filtered, the players will cross vice city, a city inspired by Miami which was already in a Grand Theft Auto Released in 2002. The first trailer for the game, unveiled in December 2023, suggested to chases, holidays on yachts and, for the first time, a female character among the main protagonists. It has since been viewed 250 million times on the Rockstar Games YouTube page.
Stake for the whole industry
The success of this saga was not exempt from controversy, especially because of its sulfurous aspect which stages individuals with criminal behavior and who encourages, according to his detractors, the players to reproduce in real life the acts of their character. Accusations rejected by his developers.
Beyond Rockstar Games, it is the whole industry that had their eyes on this launch, while the sector has experienced growth for two years, after taking advantage of the confinements linked to the COVIR to break records in terms of turnover. Analysts expected two new products to restart the video game this year: Grand Theft Auto VI And the Nintendo switch 2, scheduled for June 5. Until now, pre-orders for the machine to succeed the very popular Switch seem to be there and exceeded 2 million at the end of April for Japan alone.
Questioned at the end of 2024 by AFP, Mat Piscatella, of Circana, was however worried about this concentration of expectations for 2025, recalling that it was “rare to found the hopes of a whole year on two products”. “If one of them is postponed or does not meet the expected success”, the industry could find itself in a “very complicated” situation, he had predicted.
The announcement of a specific date for GTA VI On the other hand, what relieves certain competitors of Rockstar Games. Fearing to launch their games in the same window as an expected title, many publishers so far rehumed outings in the last quarter of 2025, as Bloomberg explained last December. They could therefore take advantage of this clarification of the calendar to make their own announcements.
