Take-Two Just Dropped A Giant GTA 6 Hint That Will Have Gamers Stoked
That's our opinion, anyway, but apparently it'll be at least another year before we see "GTA 6." Don't misunderstand; neither developer Rockstar Games nor publisher Take-Two have said anything specific about a release date. However, it's easy to infer the launch window from some statements that Take-Two made alongside its yearly earnings report that came out yesterday.
Specifically, the company's CEO Strauss Zelnick said on a conference call that FY 2025 is "a highly-anticipated year for [Take-Two]." He explained that the publisher has been grinding away for "the last several years" on "an incredibly robust pipeline of projects," and that, next year, the company will "launch several groundbreaking titles." Zelnick apparently expects these games to "set new standards in the industry."
The full quote from the conference call transcript.
If it were anyone else speaking, we would probably just dismiss his remarks as typical investor-targeted corporate bravado, but the release of a new "GTA" is a momentous occasion, and really does have the potential to shape the future of the industry in a significant way. Zelnick says that he expects to grow the company's business from $5.3 billion in FY2023 to a whopping $8 billion in FY 2025. He also expects that growth to continue in FY 2026.
These are fiscal years, of course, so they don't line up with the real calendar year; FY 2023 just wrapped up for Take-Two, so we're entering FY2024 now. That means that next May will be the end of FY2024, and the beginning of the earliest possible release period for GTA 6. We'd probably expect the game somewhere closer to the holiday season, though.
GTA 6 is supposed to be a landmark title for the series, with the first female playable character since the original two-dimensional Grand Theft Auto game as well as bleeding-edge technical innovations. Rumors and leaks have placed the title in Miami analog Vice City, and we'd expect a heavy emphasis on the multiplayer mode once again given how profitable GTA V's "GTA Online" mode has been for Take-Two.
