“We narrowed the timing because we are highly confident in that timing,” says Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Rockstar parent company Take-Two.
Upon its announcement last December, Grand Theft Auto 6 was given a 2025 launch window, and more recently, Take-Two Interactive – parent company of GTA developer Rockstar Games – narrowed that window down to Fall 2025. Rockstar, however, has a history of delaying its flagship titles, which means many are anxious about the possibility of the same happening with the long-awaited next GTA game as well.
According to Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick, however, the chances of a delay seem to be on the lower side for Grand Theft Auto 6. Speaking in a recent interview with CNBC, Zelnick acknowledged that though the game isn’t going to be completely immune to the possibility of delays – as is true for any game in development – Rockstar and Take-Two remain “highly confident” that GTA 6 will be able to hit its target launch window.
“There is slippage in the industry and we’re not immune from that,” he said (via VGC). “However, we narrowed the timing because we are highly confident in that timing.”
Zelnick also stated that the game’s specific release timing will be dependent on a number of factors, from how well the development team is able to eliminate bugs from the experience to how satisfied Rockstar is with the quality of the game, which, as Zelnick puts it, is much more subjective- and lines up with similar previous statements.
“There are elements that you can actually measure, for example the number of bugs in a title, and every one of us will make sure we have as few bugs as possible before we launch,” he said. “However, in the case of an extraordinary title, for which there are extraordinary expectations, it’s not really about bugs, it’s about creating an experience that no one’s seen before, and Rockstar Games seeks perfection in what they do. And perfection is indeed hard to measure, it really is more subjective than objective.”
Grand Theft Auto 6 is in development for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Recently, it was also announced that Grand Theft Auto 5 has surpassed 200 million units sold worldwide.
