GTA 6 is due out November 19, 2026, but as we all know it’s suffered a number of delays. It was officially announced for a fall 2025 release, but was then delayed to May 2026, and then, again officially, to this November. But in a new interview, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick suggested GTA 6 was internally targeting an even earlier release window — around spring 2025 — before it was announced for fall 2025.
Speaking to David Senra in a new video interview about his career, Zelnick said GTA 6 was “about 18 months behind the original date… not much more than that.” That suggests the original plan, even if it wasn’t announced publicly, was to have GTA 6 out spring 2025.
Assuming that’s correct, GTA 6 is significantly behind schedule, but Zelnick has gone on the record to say he’s keen to give developer Rockstar Games everything it needs to achieve “perfection.” And there is of course pressure on the game to deliver just that and break every sales record going.
Earlier this month, Business Insider reported that Take-Two is estimated to have spent $1-1.5 billion so far on GTA 6. In an interview with the publication, Zelnick wouldn’t say how much exactly, but did admit “it was expensive.” To put GTA 6 into context, most of the triple-A video game budgets that make headlines do so for being in the hundreds of millions of dollars range. Bungie's recently released extraction shooter reportedly had a budget of over $250 million, for example. Last year, the astronomical development budgets of the Call of Duty games were revealed for the first time after a court document confirmed Activision pumped $700 million into Black Ops Cold War alone, although that was over the shooter's life cycle. GTA 6, clearly, surpasses them all.
Given the expectation that GTA 6 will be the biggest entertainment launch of all time, it comes as no surprise to hear of astronomical development costs for Rockstar’s game. And it has been in the works for some time; according to Business Insider, some of the thousands of staff at Rockstar have been working on GTA 6 for over a decade now. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Zelnick said development costs have risen over the years, but Take-Two tries to give its teams “unlimited financial, creative human resources and then they aim to deliver perfection.”
Zelnick has said GTA 6 marketing will kick into gear in the summer, ahead of the planned November release date. Fans are anxiously awaiting the release of Trailer 3, as well as the launch of preorders, and there are all sorts of theories doing the rounds that will no doubt turn out to be nonsense. Such is the intense scrutiny GTA 6 is under, that even the innocuous becomes the big online talking point.
Zelnick, though, sounds pretty confident. In the interview with Senra, he said that “most people believe” GTA is the most valuable entertainment IP ever created, and while he wouldn’t say how much money the series has made over time, he did say, with a smile, “it’s a lot.” GTA 6 will surely be no different.
And Zelnick sounds really, really confident that GTA 6 won't be delayed yet again and will actually come out on November 19. He was asked how he deals with not knowing when the game will come out, given his committment to giving the developers all the time they need, and he replied, firmly: "November 19th, I do know. It’s been announced."
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
