“Grand Theft Auto” has been a gold mine — this latest delay had better be worth it for investors and gamers
Rockstar’s latest blockbuster now won’t arrive until late 2026, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
After more than a decade, Rockstar’s crown jewel — and one of the highest-grossing video games of all time — just hit the brakes... again.
Last week, its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, the gaming giant behind “Grand Theft Auto,” “Red Dead Redemption,” “NBA 2K,” and more, delayed the release of “Grand Theft Auto VI” to November 2026 — its second pushback this year after initially targeting a 2025 release. CEO Strauss Zelnick said the extra months will help “finish the game with the high level of polish players expect and deserve.” Still, shares fell ~10% on the announcement, even as the company raised its full-year bookings outlook.
The delay stretches a wait that’s already 12 years long, with fans of the crime-packed franchise going without a new game since September 2013. Though big-budget sequels now routinely take five years or more to make, the decade-plus hiatus for “GTA” still stands out. It’s no surprise that its share of Take-Two’s revenue has thinned — though it’s still pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Back in 2014, “GTA” accounted for nearly 70% of Take-Two’s sales after the record-breaking debut of “GTA V.” Today, that share is closer to just 13%. The company’s portfolio has become “increasingly diversified,” as Zelnick recently put it, spanning the “NBA 2K” sports franchise, Rockstar’s “Red Dead Redemption” series, and Zynga’s mobile empire, which Take-Two acquired in 2022.
Still, most analysts remain bullish on “GTA VI,” according to Bloomberg, with some forecasting $2 billion in first-year revenue — as a holiday season launch will likely boost sales by avoiding the slow summer months.
And it wouldn’t be the first time Rockstar has chosen quality over punctuality: the studio’s last major release, “Red Dead Redemption 2” (2018), took eight years to make and raked in $725 million just over its opening weekend. “It’s always painful when we move a date,” Zelnick said in the company’s earnings call last week. “And we’ve never regretted it in retrospect.”
