Possible GTA 6 Delay Could Tank The Games Industry If Things Go Wrong
Those quotes, along with a lot of other interesting insider information, originate with the very first episode of The Game Business Show, a new gaming industry podcast hosted by market watch veteran Christopher Dring. If his name isn't familiar, you're probably more of a gamer than a game developer; Dring was formerly involved with the long-running MCV ("The Market For Computer & Video Games") trade publication and more recently serves as Head of Games B2B at Gamesindustry.biz.
Dring had a lot to say about GTA VI in the first episode of the show. According to the reporter, the entire industry is planning its calendars around GTA VI. EA is supposedly considering a delay for its Battlefield relaunch to miss the GTA VI launch window, while live-service game operators like Epic (Fortnite) and Roblox are planning to delay major updates during at least the first few weeks of the GTA VI release, giving everyone time to finish the story mode.
The concern, Dring's contacts say, isn't really money so much as time. Players only have a limited number of hours to spend gaming, and new GTA titles are big, big time commitments. Even ignoring the live-service GTA Online side, it's not uncommon for players to take weeks to complete the single-player portion of a new GTA title as they explore the massive open world—said to be even more massive than previous entries in GTA VI. Publishers are apparently juggling multiple contingency plans depending on GTA IV's exact release date.
It's not just limited player time that's a major concern, either. Dring talks about how major game releases can really soak up the coverage and "dominate the conversation" in the gaming sphere. In 2023, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom apparently sopped up fully half of all gaming news stories published in the week of its launch; GTA VI will almost assuredly hit that mark if not more when it launches.
Which brings us to the next problem: nobody actually knows when GTA VI is going to launch. Rockstar has committed to a release this year, and Take-Two CEO (and potential Bond villain) Strauss Zelnick has doubled-down on that commitment. "2025" is a big window, though, and moreover, Rockstar has a history of delaying games just before launch. We'd personally rather the game be delayed than launched in a poor state, but the game industry at large would certainly not.
That's because a delay could clog up 2026 and leave 2025 relatively barren as far as new releases go. If everyone's scheduling to skip the GTA "blast zone" while assuming that it will launch late this year, and then Rockstar or Take-Two announce a significant delay at the last second, it's going to make for a pretty damn lean Holiday 2025 season—although Nintendo would probably be pleased, considering it has announced the Switch 2 for a launch this year, and an otherwise-barren holiday season would mean big bucks for Mushroom Kingdom Inc.
We could go on for pages with extended speculation about the potential quality of GTA VI. Concerns abound, from the extremely ambitious scope of the game revealed by leakers, to the imbalanced income split between Online and single-player modes that doesn't match up to the player apportionment, to recent stumbles with other releases (like GTA Definitive), and even to worries about a potential shift in tone now that Rockstar is bereft of its edgy culture and fratboy founders. We'll save all that for another time, though. For now, all we (and the industry) can do is hope that Rockstar announces the release window sooner than later.
You can check out Dring's podcast, The Game Business Show, at the show's website, or whereever you get your podcasts, including Apple, youTube, Substack, and Spotify.
