GTA 6 has been hit with yet another meaty delay, but CEO of Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two Interactive, Strauss Zelnick, says "we've never regretted" pushing a game back.
Originally slated to launch this fall, GTA 6 was delayed to May 26, 2026, earlier this year, and last night, it was further pushed back to November 19, 2026. An almost six-month delay certainly isn't insignificant, but speaking in Take-Two's latest earnings conference call following the delay announcement, Zelnick explains that the driving factors behind the move are "a desire to deliver as perfect an entertainment experience as we possibly can, and to try to live up to consumers' extraordinary expectations, and then exceed those expectations."
Zelnick continues, acknowledging that "it's always painful when we move a date," but while "we have done so occasionally in the past," ultimately "we've never regretted it in retrospect." He adds: "I would like to point out that we have some competitors that, in the event where more polish was required and it required slipping a date, they chose not to slip the date, and they did so at their peril."
The Take-Two boss doesn't elaborate on exactly which competitors he's referring to, but it's not hard to think of examples of games that would have benefited from a delay to avoid launching in a rough state. CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 is probably one of the first to jump to mind for many – although its updates have made it a genuinely great RPG over time, it was a very different story on release. This year, we also saw the disastrous launch of MindsEye – the new GTA-esque action-adventure from former Rockstar president Leslie Benzies – which was riddled with bugs and issues.
Ultimately, the call to delay GTA 6 is almost certainly the right one to make, even if it is unfortunate news for fans. Zelnick obviously wants to make that point clear, as he separately told IGN that "there have been limited circumstances where more time was required to polish a title and make sure that it was spectacular," and that "when our competitors go to market before something was ready, bad things happen."
Don't sweat the GTA 6 delay, Take-Two CEO says GTA 5 is "still the most technologically advanced title in the marketplace" after 12 years.
