There's good reason to believe that GTA 6 will release next year
(But like every other big game, it could take longer than expected.)
In its quarterly investor report today, Take-Two said that development of the next Grand Theft Auto game is "well underway." That's exactly what the Rockstar parent company said when it first announced GTA 6, and then again a few months later, but today's statement is a little more notable because it came alongside a general promise that "several groundbreaking titles" will release during its 2025 fiscal year, and there are some clear signs that one of those games is the new GTA.
Because corporate accounting is weird, Take-Two's 2025 fiscal year starts in April 2024, so the "groundbreaking" games we're talking about are scheduled to release sometime next year, or in early 2025 at the latest. Take-Two also said that these games will "set new standards" for the industry and propel the company to $8 billion in net bookings (all of its sales before expenses) for the fiscal year, with that momentum continuing into the next one.
Take-Two recorded $5.3 billion in net bookings during the fiscal year that just concluded, and it expects the current fiscal year to deliver just a little more than that, so these big releases need to bring in over $2.5 billion in additional cash during the 2025 fiscal year.
One of those games is probably Judas, the new game from BioShock creator Ken Levine, but it's hard to imagine that it's the two-point-five-billion-dollar difference maker. It also helps this speculation that Take-Two previously said that GTA 6 will "set creative benchmarks" for the entertainment business, which sounds a lot like the "set new standards" comment from today. Rumors that GTA 6 would release in 2025 were floating around a couple years ago, too.
The only thing stopping me from putting all my chips on next year is how often big games are delayed. It's starting to feel like an inevitability: Bethesda even missed the opportunity to launch Starfield on Skyrim's 10th birthday as it had originally planned. So even if GTA is currently scheduled to release next year—say, in September like GTA 5—there's no guarantee we won't see a jpg on Twitter explaining that the developers need more time for polish.
Last year, a monumental leak revealed a bunch of details about GTA 6, including that it will be set in Vice City and feature two protagonists. Take-Two said that the hack, which led to the arrest of a 17-year-old, didn't affect the development of GTA 6.