Easily the most anticipated game of the year and possibly of the entire decade as well, Rockstar Games’ upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 or GTA 6 still doesn’t have a proper release date, even though it’s currently slated for a fall 2025 release. However, the lack of a release window for a videogame as gigantic as GTA 6 can lead to uncertain and unease times for a lot of other game studios, and that may not be a good thing for the industry as a whole, according to Ben Porter, the director of consulting at games industry intelligence firm Newzoo.
In a recent interview with PC Gamer, he emphasized that the fates of a lot of upcoming games are currently hanging on the unknown release window of GTA 6 which can be really tricky to navigate through for a lot of companies.
“If you’re a game company who’s holding its breath waiting for GTA 6 to get out, and then it gets delayed by three, four, five, six months, what do you do?” Porter stated. “You either have to be able to launch into that big black hole that’s been left open now, or you have to extend your run rate by an additional six months–I’m certain some companies are going to tank as a result of that, right?”
And while he agreed that many companies believe GTA 6’s launch has the potential to rejuvenate the entire industry, it may not be a universally positive experience as many hope it to be.
“Everybody that we’re talking to, they’re ships trying to move out of the way of this big iceberg that is GTA 6,” Porter said. “Everybody’s trying to pull their game forward, push their game back–their strategy is to get out of the way. So if that’s what everybody’s behavior is, then how do you believe that this is going to rejuvenate the games industry?”
Also, the required promotional materials for the release of a game such as GTA 6’s caliber is still suspiciously low as of yet. Of course that may very well change as we get further into 2025 but with the release of just a single trailer so far, which has been well over a year since it came out, the possibility of GTA 6’s release slipping well into 2026 is real and tangible.
