What Does GTA VI’s Delay Mean For 2025?

It has been widely (and rightfully) theorized that many games publishers have been keeping their cards close to their chests because of Grand Theft Auto VI. Make no mistake, GTA VI will be the highest grossing piece of entertainment of all time. GTA V came out in 2013 and it still claims impressive spots in monthly sales charts. Everyone makes the joke that gamers rebuy Skyrim on every machine they own; well take that concept and double it- actually triple it!

Grand Theft Auto is beyond a phenomenon. It transcends video games in the same way Dragon Ball Z transcended anime. We all know non-anime fans who love Dragon Ball Z. We all know extremely casual gamers who use their PS5’s only for Netflix and Call of Duty. And guess what those casuals do? They buy GTA VI on launch day.

It has been a bit bizarre how quiet Take-Two has been in the past few months. Yes, GTA VI doesn’t really need any big marketing. They could shadow drop it today, and it would still sell a million before 24 hours pass. But it has felt a little weird to me that they weren’t saying anything about their highly anticipated new title. Well, my suspicions were proven true just this morning! Grand Theft Auto VI has been officially delayed until May 26th, 2026.

So now we have to ask an important question:

What does the second half of 2025 look like?

If you pull up a schedule of upcoming games for 2025, you’ll notice that everything after October is unknown. In fact, I would even say most games after June don’t seem very appealing. Yes, there’s a few noticeable games like Donkey Kong: Bananza, Ghost of Yotei and the yearly sports games and CoD. But other than that? It’s a bit of a lowkey few months!

Are publishers now going to be scrambling to rush out their games during this open pocket of time? If so, will we be seeing a gambit of unfinished games? Will these publishers instead further delay their games until after GTA VI? That doesn’t seem likely, since GTA VI will likely be an $80-$100 video game and take up most gamers’ time. It’s a bit of a lose-lose situation for them. I’m sure there will be some stubborn and ignorant publishers that release their games regardless of GTA VI and then blame fans for the games failure. I may be alone in saying this, but I would actually like the second half of 2025 to be a bit barren! It would allow me some time to catch up on the dreaded backlog. I have an endless list of random niche retro games I want to check out. But knowing me, I will end up replaying tons of my favorite games.

Take-Two and Rockstar have completely screwed up the second half of this year for tons of publishers. I’m not saying that from a salty perspective; I actually find it quite fascinating and a bit funny.

Summer Games Fest is only a few weeks away, so perhaps Mr. Keighley has a ton of release dates to shower us with. But again, are these games now going to be rushed? Only time will tell.