The gangster game, whose famous previous episode dates from 2013, had already been postponed from fall 2025 to May 2026.
“We’re sorry to add even more time to what has already been a long wait, but these additional months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you expect and deserve,” Rockstar Games said in a statement posted on social media.
The stakes are high for the financial future of the company, whose previous episode, GTA V, remains one of the best-selling titles in the world, twelve years after its marketing.
In electronic trading after Wall Street closed around 11:30 GMT, the price fell 6.66% for the American group Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games, despite better than expected results published on Thursday.
A few hours earlier, a demonstration in front of the Rockstar Games premises in Edinburgh brought together dozens of people denouncing the dismissal of around thirty employees.
The company accuses them of having shared “confidential information” while the IWGB (Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain) union sees it as “the most ruthless act of union obstruction (…) in the video games industry”.
– Promises to investors –
The announcement of the postponement of GTA VI took place at the time of the publication, on Thursday, of the quarterly results of Take-Two, which slightly raised its forecasts, thanks in particular to the results of its basketball simulation “NBA 2K”.
The group plans to reach an annual turnover between $6.38 and $6.48 billion at the end of its postponed financial year which ends on March 31, 2026. Where analysts expected around $9 billion before the announcement of the postponement.
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick promised investors Thursday that fiscal year 2027 will reach “record levels” thanks to GTA VI, and “set a new baseline” for the company, without providing a number.
The group still plans to reduce its losses slightly for the 2026 financial year, to a level between $349 and $414 million.
In addition to the basketball franchise, the last episode of which has just been released, the company highlighted the increase of “more than 20% over one year” of its GTA+ online subscription and a better than expected reception of its new game “Mafia: The Old Country”.
– Female protagonist –
Few details have leaked about GTA VI, whose first trailer, unveiled in December 2023, has been viewed nearly 270 million times on the Rockstar Games YouTube page.
It showed the return of the game to the streets of Vice City, a fictional city inspired by Miami and already used in a previous episode, promising to play a gangster in chases, parties on yachts and revealing, for the first time, a female protagonist.
The second trailer, released in May after the first postponement was announced, has racked up 138 million views to date. It shows the first scenes of the adventures of a couple of convicts, weapons or cocktails in hand, on a jet-ski or pursued by the police.
Released in 2013, GTA V continues to sell and has reached more than 220 million copies worldwide, according to updated figures given Thursday by Take-Two.
The success of the saga, which began in 1997, was punctuated by controversy for its possibility of simulating criminal activities which would encourage players, according to its detractors, to reproduce them in real life.
Accusations rejected by its creators, supported by a large community of fans.
