Many in the gaming industry are waiting to find out when Rockstar Games and Take-Two’s game will arrive…

The near-term plans of many game studios depend on whether Grand Theft Auto VI is actually released this year, and getting it wrong could be disastrous for some of them, says Ben Porter, consulting director at gaming industry intelligence firm Newzoo. The game is currently scheduled for a fall release on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series, but it’s possible it could slip to 2026. Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Cyberpunk 2077 have also been delayed several times, but Starfield has also been pushed back from its original release date.

It is also common for studios to time their releases so that they are not too close to their competitors, as they would steal each other’s attention. So many may move their games to the early spring or summer of 2026, even if they have something of quality in the pipeline… but if Grand Theft Auto VI does this, it could have a very serious impact on the gaming industry. Such a setback could be catastrophic for a studio whose finances are already fragile, and given the number of closures we’ve seen in recent years, financial fragility seems not uncommon.

“If you’re a game company and you’re holding your breath waiting for Grand Theft Auto VI to come out and it gets delayed three, four, five, six months, what do you do? You either have to launch into this big black hole that’s now open, or you have to extend your run rate another six months – I’m sure some companies are going to go under, right? You hear a lot of people saying that Grand Theft Auto VI is going to rejuvenate the market, and I think there’s an element of truth to that, but I don’t know that it’s necessarily going to be universally uplifting.

It will certainly have an effect. It will put eyes back on the games market from investors and things like that. But everybody that we’re talking to, they’re ships trying to get out of the way of this big iceberg that is Grand Theft Auto VI. Everybody’s trying to push their game forward, push their game back, their strategy is to get out of the way.

So if that’s the way everybody’s behaving, how do you think that’s going to rejuvenate the game industry?”, Porter told PCGamer.

There is the possibility of a delay. Take-Two has another game coming out this fall. Borderlands 4 is scheduled for release on September 23, 2025. If THIS is not delayed, it would be too close to two major Take-Two titles…

Source: PCGamer