The trailer for GTA 6 provides an important insight: Rockstar Games remains Rockstar Games! That sounds obvious, but it isn’t: The way in which the video was published at short notice and without any additional accompanying material or in-depth information about the game is practically identical to the ten-year-old GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, released in 2018 – the studio’s last two works.
Apparently there has been no change at Rockstar Games in the meantime, everything continues to run its own way. This allows us to draw conclusions about what will probably happen with GTA 6.
The game is currently scheduled to be released in 2025, but details of the company’s balance sheet suggest a release in the spring. If Rockstar Games’ marketing is roughly based on Red Dead Redemption 2 – which was announced in October 2016 – we won’t find out more about GTA 6 until the summer of 2024.
For Red Dead Redemption 2 there were the first screenshots and a postponement in the trailer a little more than half a year after the premiere. The official reason: the game was the first from Rockstar Games for the then current generation of consoles (PS4 and Xbox One). As is well known, the developers can also use this argument for GTA 6.
A little more than six months later, there was a second postponement, again for technical reasons. A specific date was given, which was then adhered to: October 26, 2018.
Important: Only three months before this release did Rockstar Games provide real information about Red Dead Redemption 2. Only then did we find out that there is only one controllable hero and what the hunting missions are all about. Applied to GTA 6, this would mean that we would hardly know any details about the gameplay before the end of 2024.
If we assume just one postponement and the game comes onto the market for Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X/S at the end of 2025, the PC version should not follow until a year later at the earliest.
But the matter is far from over: a new generation of consoles is expected around 2027 – this was revealed, among other things, by documents relating to Microsoft’s takeover of Activision Blizzard.
Waiting for GTA 7?
GTA 4 has undergone not one, but two such generational changes. This means: A new version for Playstation 6 and the next Xbox could come onto the market from 2028. The usually well-informed leaker when it comes to Rockstar Games Tez2 just wrote in a forumthat the developers for their new work “Episode Content” to plan.
Video: GTA 6 – Trailer (December 2023)
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According to Tez2, this does not mean individual large solo expansions like in GTA 4, but rather smaller sequels that could appear every year or two years. This could then be used to equip special and collector’s editions as well as versions for the new platforms mentioned.
Another prediction: the announcement for GTA 7 may happen twelve years from now! In any case, the first trailer for GTA 5 appeared at the beginning of 2011 – but maybe things will go a little faster with the next Grand Theft Auto.