Is GTA 6 in development? Although Rockstar Games hasn't officially confirmed that it's working on another instalment in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, there are plenty of reports and rumors suggesting it's on the way.
Believe it or not, it's been seven years since GTA 5 launched at the tail end of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 generation of consoles. That's a long time ago, so we don't think it's impossible that GTA 6 is in the pipeline, especially after the remarkable and ongoing success of GTA 5.
With the end of 2020 approaching, bringing with it the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X and the start of the next console generation, it feels like the right time to hope that Rockstar might have something to reveal sometime soon, even if any release date is likely to be a while away.
Although we still don't have an official confirmation and details are thin on the ground, that hasn't stopped us gathering together the best pieces of gossip, rumor and fact for your perusing pleasure. Here's everything we know so far about GTA 6.
GTA 6 release date: when is GTA 6 coming out?
Red Dead Redemption 2 has now been in the wild for nearly two years now and GTA 5 for nearly seven, which means we're hoping a GTA 6 announcement isn't far away – even though we're likely to be waiting a while to play it.
According to some rumors, we could see the next Grand Theft Auto announced in 2020, with a potential release in 2021. However, Rockstar has been focused on getting Red Dead Online up and running - and GTA Online is still raking in the dough - which may have diverted attention, not to mention the delays potentially caused by Dan Houser's departure from Rockstar and the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic.
At the more conservative end of the scale, reputable industry analyst Michael Pachter predicts the game's actual release could be as far away as 2022. In an interview with Gaming Bolt, Pachter said that he thinks a 2020 announcement with a 2021 release would be the best case scenario, while a 2021 announcement with a 2022 release or later would be more likely.
But the most solid GTA 6 release date hint comes from publisher Take-Two Interactive's marketing budget. Reported by VentureBeat, Take-Two's 10-K SEC filing (which lays out financial plans for the next five years) shows that the company expects to spend $89 million on marketing between April 2023, and the end of March 2024 - that's a huge spike and, as the report points out, more than half the marketing budget expected for any other fiscal year over the next decade.
This has led industry analyst Jeff Cohen to predict that this spike is because GTA 6 is expected to release within this period.
In a note to investors, included in VentureBeat's report, Cohen pointed out that previous marketing budgets have predicted the releases of other big releases from Take-Two Interactive, including Red Dead Redemption 2.
If this prediction is correct then we would expect to see GTA 6 release sometime between April 2023 and March 2024. Originally this spike was expected to take place in the fiscal year 2023, however its been pushed back to 2024. If it is GTA 6 that has caused this spike, this would suggest that a delay has incurred - potentially due to Covid-19.
Take-Two Interactive has already revealed it has 93 "full game releases" planned for the next five years. During an earnings call (via GamesRadar), Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said that this line-up is the strongest in the company's history. According to Slatoff, 63 of these games are "core gaming experiences", 17 will be "mid-core or arcade" and 13 are casual games.
However, out of these 93 games, 21 will be exclusively mobile titles - with the other 72 landing on PC, consoles and streaming platforms. But, perhaps the most interesting stat from this meeting is that half of this games line-up are from existing IPs.
This has suggested that we could see GTA 6 in that five-year window, with the highly-anticipated next GTA falling into that "core gaming experiences" category. So a release date sometime in 2023 would definitely fall into that window.
This is all still speculation at the moment and this marketing budget increase could be due to another factor. Until Take-Two Interactive or Rockstar Games confirms GTA 6's official release window, or makes an official GTA 6 announcement, we can only speculate about when GTA 6 is coming. Hopefully we won't have much longer to wait.
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