To the best of our knowledge, despite the constant bombardment of rumors, Grand Theft Auto VI is still planned for release on November 19, 2026. This wasn’t the originally aimed date, as when the game was initially announced, it was scheduled for Fall 2025, before moving to May 27, a day now populated by 007: First Light. In a new Interview with Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, we have learned that this initial timeframe was an internal delay itself, initially aiming for people to be killing their way through Vice City in the spring of 2025, before the announcement of Fall.
Speaking with David Senra in a video interview that spanned subjects across his entire 40-year career, Zelnick stated that Grand Theft Auto VI was “about 18 months behind the original date… not much more than that.” This has suggested that original plans saw the game out that Spring, even if this was never discussed publicly. Rumors this year have called even the most recent release date into question, as the most anticipated game, possibly ever, still seems to be having some struggles internally to get the product over the finish line, though Jasson Schreier has called it a misrepresentation of what he stated at the time.
With this, it would appear that Grand Theft Auto VI is significantly behind schedule, even if you factor in previous release cycles of games like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Grand Theft Auto V, both of which saw delays before their eventual releases. This said, Zelnick has made clear that he will give Rockstar anything needed to achieve “perfection.” With the game’s budget estimated to be around $1-1.5 billion, and analysts are confident that the game could break all sales records, and could see a spike in console sales despite the constant price increases, there is a lot of pressure on the title and a lot of reasons to get it right.
While Zelnick would not confirm the cost to develop the title, he did admit “it was expensive.” In perspective, most triple-A titles at the high end tend to cost about $250 million total. Such was the case with games like Sony’s Spider-Man 2. On the higher end, court documents revealed that developer Activision has pumped $700 Million into Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War, though this was over the game’s lifetime, rather than full development. Grand Theft Auto VI is set to overtake all of them, though given the franchise is the best-selling IP of all time, across all media, it isn’t shocking they feel they can spend this much to for the best version of their product.
The game has also been in development for a long time, with Business Insider stating that several of the current staff on the game have been working on its development for over a decade. In another interview, this one with Bloomberg, Zelnick said that while development costs have risen since the project was begun, Take-Two has always tried to give the team “unlimited financial, creative human resources, and then they aim to deliver perfection.”
Zelnick has stated that Marketing for Grand Theft Auto VI will start to kick into full effect sometime this summer, so not a very long wait, in anticipation of its November 19 release date. This comes among fan furor for a third trailer, with previous rumors suggesting both pre-orders and a new trailer were both set to drop today, May 18. This appears not to be the case at the time of writing this.
There seems to be some confidence, based on what Zelnick said, that it will make this latest release date. When asked how he deals with not knowing when the game will come out, he stated firmly, “November 19th, I do know. It’s been announced.” Speaking on the value of the IP, he also stated that “most people believe” that GTA is the most valuable IP of all time, not giving a firm number for lifetime sales, but stating with a smile, “it’s a lot.”
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