Grand Theft Auto 6 release date has been announced, but the game has been delayed to 2026 | VGC
Grand Theft Auto 6 release date has been announced, but the game has been delayed to 2026 | VGC
May 26, 2026
I wonder if the next one will take so long that the world it satirises is long gone. Facebook being parodied in GTA V no longer makes much sense, for example
This game is set in Florida. It's pretty evergreen. Especially given the political climate for the past 8 years
Disney world and Maralago?
... Untill Florida gets absolutely wiped out by a combo of its housing market and tourism economy simultaneously eating shit (this is currently occuring), and then also gets slammed by a, oh i dunno, a series of near record breaking hurricanes ... in a record breaking short amount of time, and then can't rebuild because FEMA either doesn't exist or is massively underfunded.
Oh and way more people will die, and there will be way more property damage than there otherwise would be... becauase all the agencies and funding that went into tracking hurricanes just got cut to almoat nothing.
Its been ... what, over a decade, between GTA V and 6's planned releaae date?
I'd say that chances are actually quite good that within 10 years after 2026, Florida becomes essentially a mostly destroyed disaster zone, with maybe a few parts of semi-civilization... like a swampy version of the first Mad Max movie.
(For reference, GTA V is based on an amalgamation of LA, San Fran, San Diego, out into the sticks... oh and while we are in thr GTA V to GTA VI gap, a huge chunk of LA got burned to the ground, yay climate change!)
(To me, the challenge of GTA VI would be... how do you even fucking do parody anymore? The country has gone batshit insane during the game's development, I will be amazed if they actually manage to work in the biting and underhanded social commentary that previous GTA games had... because it would be essentially impossible. My guess is it'll have some parody and satire, but nowhere near as much as 4 or 5... and the story will basically just be about some cool badasses who are cool and badass and are getting their bag however they can because YOLO)
After looking at the jokes featured in the leaks....it hasn't aged a day.
Why doesn't Facebook make sense to parody anymore? It's still out there
The world's relationship with Facebook has changed a smidge since 2013.
It's still ripe for parody, but the elements of relevance aren't the same as they were.
Rumors are that they want to charge $100 and they're sitting back to see the financial climate with the price increases to see if consumers will bend over and take it without any pushback
Or...switch 2 version taking longer than Expected..
OR. they're seeing the writing on the wall for the console industry and they're going to release VI for all platforms (PC included) next year
Speaking out of my ass, I think the majority will take it without pushback.
I'm sure there's a swath of people with a console just play the yearly COD/FIFA, eagerly waiting for GTA 6 to drop. They'll buy it without blinking.
$100 minimum.
My guess would be they'll do some kind of tiered release strucructure, and/or have already finished or mostly finished 2 years+ worth of major updates, including new 'chapters' of the main single player story... and basically, you'll have to subscribe.
Like ... $160 for whole game, major expansion 1, 2 and 3, $120 for game + 1st expansion... Or your baseline $100, and then a subscription battlepass mmo monthly charge, or you can pay more for expansions in chunks, seperately.
Something like that.
switch 2 version assumption here? weird
Can imagine there may be some story changes with America’s acceleration into fascism.
They're gonna have to have a main cast who is just a literal chimpanzee in a vacation shirt flinging actual shit all the time just to achieve any level of unrealistic over the top satire. The real world is just too ridiculous for anything less to be their usual exaggerated caricature.
GTA Online still brings a BILLION dollars every year.
The next GTA can’t be anything except 100% perfection and Rockstar isn’t in a hurry
GTA Online still brings in a billion dollars every year. The next GTA will try to capitalize and expand on that, and cannot, then, be perfect.
Ftfy
As a PC-only gamer, I suppose this means that I won't get to play this until late 2027 at the very earliest.
Rockstar’s delay announcement may result in numerous other studios confirming 2025 releases for their own games. Earlier this year a Bloomberg report claimed that rival game publishers were waiting as long as possible to commit to their release dates for next Fall, because of GTA 6’s planned release.
Or they could, you know, make a game that rivals GTA VI. Come on Square Enix, make a Sleeping Dogs successor, I know you have it in you!
The developer that made Sleeping Dogs shut down, and Square Enix had so many misses that they sold off their western studios. You should keep an eye on MindsEye and Mafia: The Old Country though. I've been dying for a good crime story that isn't Yakuza.
I would love it if they sold some of those IPs so another studio can run with them. We really don't have a lot of Asian crime games, and those have a very different feel than western crime games.
Anyway, thanks for the recommendations! I've wishlisted them and will check them out when they launch. The mafia series is great, and MindsEye could be awesome if it's done well.
So no sequel to that Guardians of the Galaxy game then? I really enjoyed that one.
It was so....
Metal?
Yeah....
Probably a good thing...
But is it just me, or am I the only one who really couldn't give two shits about GTA?
I get it's a massive franchise, like Madden or Call of Duty... don't buy those either.
Hah. I would not compare yearly money graps to GTA. Every 3d GTA has been setting the new standard for the genre.
I care about GTA but the online element of it is of zero interest to me, and it seems that's what it's become.
So far we've gotten good single player games along with those online modes, including RDR2 after GTA5, so it's at least plausible that GTA6 will have good single player still.
Won't be playing it until it's on PC anyways, so I'll for sure have found out by then.
I'll still want it, I'll feel a strong sense of FOMO if I don't, but I don't really care any more. After seeing how much money GTAO was making I strongly suspect they'll put a lot more focus on that. In my opinion gta online sucked a lot of ass. It was fun as a playground to hang around with friends in, but as an actual game I'd rather we'd have agreed on any other game to play. I would never load it up to play by myself.
I hope I'm wrong and the story mode slaps, but at the super-premium price it's going to end up costing i won't justify it.
I get it’s a massive franchise, like Madden or Call of Duty… don’t buy those either.
whew, I'm trying to understand your comment, but this is kinda coming off pretty...holier-than-thou? Which, I do get that because I can find myself like that with movies/tv, but still...we gotta let people like what they like.
In this case though, I honestly think this is a pretty terrible comparison. Madden and CoD don't have massive single player appeal that GTA or RDR have. They are total schlock in that regard (though, I hear CoD's recent campaigns are actually good).
GTA and RDR on the other hand very skillfully mix elements of RPG, immersive sim, and adventure game. They're huge sandboxes for the player to explore and discover new things, within which are nestled very well written stories that critique modern life and touch upon themes that, yes, you could find them in various indie games if you look a bit, but are somewhat unique in the blockbuster gamescape. It's difficult to find other single player games with the scope of Rockstar games, though I think it is getting easier.
But comparing GTA to Madden or CoD is kinda whack unless you're looking at GTA Online in isolation.
Still, there's very little overlap in GTA Online and Madden/COD. GTA Online is still very much sandbox-y, caters somewhat well to playing alone, and has a team gameplay loop. People tend to play this periodically but probably don't have it be their main/only game.
Madden and COD are both highly competitive games with pretty much no sandbox, and their appeal is pretty limited after a couple years when the next one comes out. People tend to stick to these franchises as their main game, playing very little else.
The main similarity is that they're AAA games, but that's really it.
All three are games that appeal to the Doritos and Mountain Dew set.
I enjoy it, I don‘t (allegedly) 100 bucks enjoy it though. I‘ll wait for a few years and grab it on sale. And ngl, I‘ve grown pretty tired of triple digit playtime games anyway.
I’ve always found the missions clunky, the worlds annoying, and the controls borderline unusable.
You are not alone. There are so many quality open world action games out there that I never understood the hype around GTA.
You’re right! But the hype exists. It will reach peak for the four months post the launch, creating fomo. Peer pressure with such launches are a human problem
Back in the day, before gta4, it was a fun funny romp through the criminal life of culture, making fun of as much as it could.
Now it's just a very expensive franchise.
Eh, each game had a very different feel. I didn't play GTA 1 or 2, so I'll start after that point:
Each has a fair amount of satire and something to say about the world, I just found GTA V a lot less interesting than previous titles. GTA IV is my favorite for a playthrough, GTA SA is a close second (I love exploring SA).
How can you say that when they haven't made a game in a decade? Its like saying the beetles are culturally irrelevant. GTA continues to influence other games and is relevant to society even if they never made another game. I think fortnite is a dumb capitalist nothing game but I can't deny it's relevance.
I’m with you on this one.
So to all those other publishers who have already pushed their games release date out to avoid GTA6, you got a new date to avoid.
At least they know what this one is so they can plan better.
They have to wait for the playstation 6 release so yhey can sell it multiple times
With the PS6 rumored to be targeting 2027, the timing would work out perfectly for that.
Bastards. Always with the triple dip
I feel like you shouldn't release a date if the game isn't in ready for release. After releasing the date, all that should come is polish and minor bug fixing
If I have to sign into a rockstar account through a launcher to play it, I ain't interested.
I guess you’re not interested in it, then
Not sure if the nation this game is based on will be recognizable by the time it comes out.
[Sound of the whole gaming market start breathing again]
I guess this November is no longer a big red X on every publisher's release calendar
Yep, just push that red X over to May next year
I tend to prefer bigger games delay purely so they don't release as buggy messes (hello, Cyberpunk 2077).
Hoping they use that time to refine what they have and maybe even have it ported to PC for release.
I can't see that being an issue with GTA. It's far too big to fuck up like that, which is why there's a delay.
So now can we please get the other games that were supposed to launch in autumn?
Oh yeah. Everyone's off to the races now.
This must mean that horizon is going to launch its next game in May 2026.
Man, development times are getting pretty crazy at this point. Hard to believe that we are starting to see decades between sequels to titles as a normal thing in the high end of the market.
It's no wonder more games are aiming for games-as-a-service style models.
Well, given the implosion in the industry due to live service games, that's not really a solution either. The actual solution is seemingly to just make smaller games, but they're not really interested in that, so they'll go out of business the first time they have a game that doesn't hit.
2027 for non casuals (scummy delayed pc release)
they saw what happened with the world over the last year and realized the satire theyve been making is all outdated
whats supposed to be comedic fiction of idiocracy already became basis of reality so the jokes need to be revisioned to double down once more
Hang on, they just now announced it, it's been delayed, and they still plan to launch it next year? This is gonna be a straight up shit show, folks.
Wait did they announce a release date or is it delayed? It can't be both
It's both
Original window was late 2025 now its may 26, 2026
Original window doesn't sound like a release date