GTA 6 is still on track for autumn 2025, says Take-Two

With no new GTA 6 data in over a yr, all eyes had been on Take-Two’s monetary outcomes on Thursday (February 6) for a desperately wanted replace.

Whereas we didn’t get a brand new trailer or screenshot to go along with the numbers, we did get the following smartest thing – affirmation that GTA 6 remains to be on observe for its autumn 2025 launch.

Right here’s the whole lot we all know concerning the extremely anticipated recreation, together with its setting, story, gameplay and rumoured worth.

“Trying forward, this yr is shaping as much as be one among our strongest ever as we plan to launch…Grand Theft Auto VI within the Fall,” US-based Take-Two mentioned, noting that it’ll slot between Mafia 4 in the summertime and Borderlands 4 later within the yr.

Okay, so it was simply one other assertion designed to maintain buyers glad and avid gamers on the hook, however hungry followers starved of latest data will take something they will get at this fee.

Was it sufficient to place everybody’s fears to mattress? Most likely not. In spite of everything, Rockstar is in command of growing the sport and, like several main studio, it is susceptible to delays having beforehand pushed again tentpole releases like Pink Lifeless Redemption 2 and GTA 5.

With video games usually being rushed to the end line as builders work time beyond regulation to satisfy tight deadlines, a controversial working observe generally known as “crunch” within the gaming business, the probabilities of one thing going fallacious are nonetheless excessive. Even a dodgy line of latest code might derail the whole recreation.

Worryingly, Take-Two didn’t present an replace on the PC launch of GTA 6, which nonetheless doesn’t have a launch window, not to mention a concrete launch date. However, if historical past is something to go by, it’ll in all probability arrive a yr or two after the console model.

The sport’s autumn launch window additionally provides its creators some respiration room in case any surprising points do pop up.

Regardless of the obstacles, there are some positives we are able to take away from the most recent assertion. Primarily, Take-Two has reiterated the launch window a number of occasions now, and doing it so near its potential launch might point out that it’s assured about assembly its deadline.

But after years of ready, to suppose that GTA 6 might be simply seven months away nonetheless feels unbelievable.

Rockstar’s web site mentioned the sport would launch on current-gen consoles in 2025, together with the PS5 and Xbox Sequence X/S.

Sadly for PS4 house owners, the sport will not be launched on last-gen {hardware}. That is all of the extra cause so as to add a PS5 or Xbox Sequence X or S to your Christmas want record. Or, you possibly can anticipate the PS5 Slim, which is arriving within the UK quickly.

Simply don’t go anticipating GTA 6 to launch on Xbox Recreation Go. Whereas Take-Two is not any stranger to subscription companies (see GTA+, which noticed a double-digit yearly enhance within the newest quarter), it doesn’t appear eager on going all-in on the Netflix-for-gaming mannequin being pushed by Microsoft.

“I believe that providing a frontline title with a premium worth in a subscription service, day and date, will push customers to that subscription service for at the least a time frame,” Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick informed GamesIndustry.biz.

Nonetheless, he added that Microsoft’s technique would not change how Take-Two views the subscription alternative. “No, it will not have an effect on our selections,” Mr Zelnick says. “As a result of our selections are rational.”

We had already heard rumblings that GTA 6 might be set in Vice Metropolis, a fictional tackle Miami, Florida, and the sport’s first and solely trailer confirmed that.

Loosely based mostly on the cities of Miami and Miami Seaside, and set within the fictional state of Leonidas, it appears attractive. Given Rockstar’s penchant for creating huge, detailed open worlds, it’s no shock the sport will function Everglades-style swamp areas. 

Within the trailer, we see an airboat careening by a swamp. There are two fast scenes of this space. One is about on a ravishing sun-dappled morning, the opposite in the course of the day, with dozens of flamingos on-screen without delay. 

There are additionally a few scenes of alligators intruding into outlets and folks’s properties. The record of oddball characters contains filth bike gangs, a convict coated in face tats, a hammer-wielding girl, and one other girl twerking on a shifting automotive.

As older followers will recall, Vice Metropolis was the setting for 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice Metropolis. Early stories prompt the sport world could also be bigger than that of GTA 5, whereas the earlier Vice Metropolis was a comparatively small assortment of islands.

As is extensively reported, we’re getting the sequence’ first feminine protagonist. Certainly one of GTA 6’s principal characters is a girl named Lucia. We see her in jail and out of it, committing an armed theft together with her male associate (who was beforehand recognized in leaks as Jason).

Like a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, the pair are more likely to enterprise on a crime-fuelled odyssey throughout the state of Leonidas, taking in its deranged sights and sounds, and clashing with its underworld milieu.

As Tupac and Jay-Z famously sang: “All I would like on this lifetime of sin is me and my girlfriend.”

Co-founder of Rockstar Video games, Dan Houser, informed the Guardian in 2013 why a girl wasn’t playable in GTA V — and the way the workforce might make it occur.

“We didn’t actually give it some thought this time [of GTA V]. That’s to not say that we couldn’t or we wouldn’t,” he mentioned. “This character set is simply what got here to us: it wasn’t, ‘We’ve bought X and Y so we want Z’, we weren’t making an attempt to do it off a guidelines — I don’t suppose that may ever provide you with one thing that’s plausible or partaking.

“Sooner or later, might we do a recreation with a lead feminine character? In fact. We simply haven’t discovered the appropriate recreation for it but, nevertheless it’s one of many issues that we all the time take into consideration. It didn’t really feel pure for this recreation however positively for the appropriate recreation sooner or later — with the appropriate themes, it might be incredible.”

Different rumours have hinted at the potential of a playable feminine character who’s the intelligent one within the group and is nice at utilizing know-how and hacking. Sounds nice to us.

How a lot would you pay for GTA 6? Avid gamers are so determined to get their palms on the extremely anticipated launch that one analyst believes that writer Take-Two might cost a whopping $100 (£90-£100) — and nonetheless don’t have any downside promoting tens of millions of copies.

To place that into perspective, the common worth for a top-tier recreation as we speak is £69.99.

If GTA had been to take the lead by spiking its worth, the remainder of the business would reportedly observe go well with. The end result would require avid gamers to fork out between £90-£100 often for blockbuster video games — on prime of the £400-plus they’re already spending on consoles.

That eye-opening prediction comes from Matthew Ball, a former Amazon government turned tech business sage. Mr Ball is arguably greatest identified for his influential work on the metaverse, revealed earlier than Fb’s rebranding as Meta — and will have influenced the corporate’s title change.

In his newest report, he has centered on a bonafide money-spinner: Grand Theft Auto. Mr Ball says the broader gaming business hopes GTA 6 will break the $100 barrier and carry different video games. A rising tide lifts all boats, in spite of everything.

Therefore, indies and different smaller video games might ask for extra upfront, too. So, a recreation that beforehand value £50 would value £60, a £60 recreation can be £70, and so forth.

If the gaming business does embrace the upper worth level, it might mark the primary vital worth bounce since 2020, when large publishers hiked costs from £60 to £70 for AAA titles.

Earlier than that, costs had been caught at £60 because the Xbox 360 and PS3 period in 2005. Whereas that bump prompted some grumbles, it’s price noting that video games as we speak are nonetheless cheaper than within the Nineties when adjusted for inflation. Again then, a £50 recreation would value the equal of £90-£100 as we speak.

Regardless of rising improvement prices and lavish manufacturing budgets, nominal recreation costs have stayed comparatively low due to digital distribution and new methods for publishers to money in, like DLC and microtransactions. GTA On-line, as an illustration, has made a killing by letting gamers buy Shark Playing cards with actual cash. These come topped up with in-game forex that will help you purchase the whole lot from condos to fighter jets.

Mr Ball isn’t the one one flagging a worth rise. Notably, a senior developer from Larian Studios, the corporate behind Baldur’s Gate 3, just lately sparked a debate within the gaming business by suggesting that “virtually all video games” are underpriced relative to their improvement prices.

So, with inflation nonetheless biting and GTA 6 being arguably probably the most hyped launch in gaming historical past, might Rockstar lastly break the $100 barrier — and make it stick?

In December 2023, Followers driving excessive on the primary trailer’s shiny visuals could have been disillusioned when the sport’s tentative launch date was confirmed on the finish of the clip. Because the title flashed throughout the display screen, the textual content beneath revealed that GTA 6 would arrive in 2025. 

A number of months later, Take-Two revised that launch date window by promising to launch the sport in autumn 2025.

“We’re extremely assured that Rockstar Video games will ship an unparalleled leisure expertise, and our expectations for the business affect of the title proceed to extend,” mentioned Take-Two’s Zelnick on the corporate’s earnings name in Could 2024. “We narrowed the timing as a result of we’re extremely assured within the timing”.

He additionally highlighted the chance of “slippage” in as we speak’s video games, the place improvement points can result in delays. He mentioned the way you would possibly decide when a recreation is prepared for launch, noting that GTA 6 is barely totally different.

“There are components you’ll be able to measure, such because the variety of bugs in a title. Each one among us will make certain we’ve as few bugs as potential earlier than we launch. Nevertheless, within the case of a rare title, of which there are extraordinary expectations, it is not likely about bugs,” Mr Zelnick mentioned.  

“It is about creating an expertise nobody has seen earlier than. And Rockstar Video games seeks perfection in what they do. Perfection is certainly exhausting to measure, it is extra subjective than goal.”

He didn’t drop any hints concerning the precise recreation content material, although, saying we should always all watch the trailer once more — a video with greater than 200 million views.

Let’s hope this seek for perfection doesn’t find yourself with a GTA 6 getting pushed again — when even the “fall 2025” launch window is a intestine punch for followers hoping to play it sooner after a gruelling 11-year anticipate the brand new recreation.

Maybe avid gamers can take solace from Take-Two repeatedly sticking to the 2025 timeline, regardless of worrying stories that GTA 6 might be delayed to 2026.

We already knew it was full steam forward for the sport’s developer, Rockstar, because it readies the following chapter in its American crime saga. In February 2024, Bloomberg reported that the agency had entered the ultimate phases of improvement on GTA 6, with workers being ordered again to work from the workplace 5 days per week to finish it.

Nevertheless, a subsequent article from gaming web site Kotaku (that different stories have dismissed) claimed Rockstar modified its work-from-home coverage in a last-gasp sprint to forestall a expensive delay. With the sport reportedly “falling behind” schedule, the developer was “frightened” about “lacking the 2025 window and slipping into 2026”.

Other than the trailer, Rockstar’s different large clue about GTA 6’s launch date got here final Could. 

In a press launch, the corporate forecasted a record-breaking windfall in revenue for its fiscal yr 2025, which covers April 2024 to March 2025.

“We count on to enter this new period by launching a number of ground-breaking titles that we consider will set new requirements in our business and allow us to attain over $8bn (£6.5bn) in web bookings,” the gaming firm mentioned.

In February final yr, Rockstar confirmed {that a} new entry within the GTA franchise was within the works.

“With each new challenge we embark on, our aim is all the time to considerably transfer past what we’ve beforehand delivered – and we’re happy to verify that lively improvement for the following entry within the Grand Theft Auto sequence is effectively underway,” the corporate mentioned.

Rockstar could also be cagey about asserting extra information following a number of high-profile leaks.

In September 2022, a UK-based hacker broke into the corporate’s servers and revealed virtually 100 movies of an early in-development model of the sport. A candidate for probably the most substantial pre-release online game leak ever, it confirmed the sport in a state by no means supposed to be seen by the general public.

Months later, a TikTok account referred to as @i_see_in_4k shared two quick movies of the sport on Saturday, December 2.

Each clips confirmed what gave the impression to be the sport’s map. There was additionally a digital camera panning to point out a bit of the town with skyscrapers within the distance and a freeway to the facet.

Quickly after the footage appeared on TikTok, gaming information web site GTABase reported that “it seems the ‘leaked’ footage has come from the son of a Rockstar Video games worker”.

Rockstar has neither confirmed the authenticity of the leaked footage nor revealed any details about who may be liable for it.

Then, in probably the most famend leak but, the sport’s trailer was leaked on social media hours earlier than its auspicious launch date. The grainy, low-quality clip was watermarked with huge textual content that learn “Purchase BTC” concerning the cryptocurrency bitcoin.

Rockstar reacted by swiftly importing the trailer to YouTube, whereas the account behind the leak was banned from X.