Grand Theft Auto VI a lock for a November 2026 launch

Gamers counting down the hours on social media until a company’s – any company’s – quarterly earnings call begins is rather unusual… but that’s exactly what just happened with Take Two, the publisher of what’s shaping up to be “the biggest entertainment property release of all time”: Grand Theft Auto VI. Seemingly thousands of gamers went online a few hours ago to learn whether they’ll be able to enjoy Rockstar’s much-anticipated mega-production this year or if it will be delayed once more, possibly into 2027. They were not disappointed: GTA VI is on track for a November 19th launch on the PS5/PS5 Pro and the Xbox Series S/X, as previously announced.

Take Two, as everyone expected, shared with investors the guidance range for its financial year that just began: the company expects its annual revenue to land anywhere between 8 and 8.2 billion dollars for the period ending on March 31st, 2027. Many financial analysts consider this forecast to be on the conservative side (fully expecting the company’s revenue to surpass the 9-billion-dollar mark based on the hype surrounding Grand Theft Auto VI alone) but it’s probably better for Take Two to announce a mark they can comfortably hit and over-deliver than over-promise and fail to deliver, however unlikely that seems right now.

GTA fans care about the game itself way more than they care about Take Two’s financials, though, which is why they’ll be disappointed to know that not much else in terms of tangible information was shared about GTA VI yesterday. The company’s CEO, Strauss Zelnick, confirmed in a Gamesindustry.biz interview that the game will be extensively marketed, despite its already crazy level of hype – just in different ways than GTA V was. In his own piece on the matter, Bloomberg‘s Jason Schreier noted that promotion for the title will begin in the summer, so preorders for the game are expected to open around the same time.

This, unfortunately, all but rules out the possibility of the much-awaited GTA VI Trailer 3 – where fans expect to see actual gameplay – appearing by the end of May, despite such rumors making the rounds on the Web. Our best bet right now may very well be Sony’s State of Play presentation on June 2nd, which seems rather important given that (a) it was announced unusually early and (b) it will be the first time since 2018 the company will be showing it in actual movie theaters (six locations around the US so far). We already know there’s some kind of co-promotion agreement between Sony and Take Two regarding GTA VI, so it would make sense for the game to even briefly (?) appear in that hour-long State of Play presentation too.

Having said that, there’s obviously a lot we don’t yet know about Grand Theft Auto VI, ranging from the size of its open world and the background of its characters to what new it brings to the table in gameplay terms, its online component and how much it will cost. This is a game so long in the making, though, with a marketing push so meticulously planned, that it’s highly unlikely we’ll get all or even most of that in one fell swoop: we’ll be drip-fed morsels of information week by week, month by month instead, all the way to mid-November… plus, there will still be a lot for players to discover on their own once the game is out. RDR2, anyone?