GTA 6 has been moved out of 2025 and well into next year as Rockstar confirms a May 26, 2026 release date, but what does that mean for the games industry this year? It's certainly not good, according to one veteran analyst.
Circana games industry analyst Mat Piscatella has previously spoken about how he believes GTA 6 could be the most "important thing to ever release in the industry," noting early last year that the games market had to "survive 2024" and "get to GTA 6 and hope." Needless to say, it's no wonder that he doesn't think this delay is good news.
"Grand Theft Auto 6 is a game that would bring relapsed players back to the consoles in particular, and would have been a driver of incremental hardware sales," Piscatella tells GamesRadar+ following the delay announcement today. "It would have also, if successful, brought potential growth months to the industry (again, particularly on the console side) and may have even worked to reinvigorate investor interest in the segment.
"I don't think anyone benefits in 2025 from this push," he continues. "It wasn't looming over the holiday season, it was going to be a big driver of what success potential the holiday season had."
Looking ahead to the rest of the year for the industry, Piscatella is now expecting total spending in the United States on gaming hardware, accessories, and content will "fall in the mid single-digit percentage range, with spending falling to the lowest level since before the pandemic." He adds: "Due to further uncertainties around pricing and product availability, there is also the potential for significant downside from there."
Between GTA 6's delay and the massive Xbox price hike from earlier this week, Piscatella further describes the situation on Bluesky as "nightmare scenario territory for the video game industry forecast," adding: "C'mon people. It was 'survive TO 25' not through."
He continues: "GTA 6 getting pushed does not mean there will all of a sudden be a whole bunch of dollars available for other games in 2025. It just means that a bunch of the dollars that would have been spent on gaming this year have disappeared."
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