GTA 6 may be released soon next year

Publisher Take-Two Interactive may have just teased the release window for the next entry in the biggest gaming franchise of all: Grand Theft Auto 6. It could be on the way as soon as next year.

In a press release issued alongside its annual earnings report, Take-Two shared forecasts for the coming years, including huge projections for fiscal years 2025 and 2026. For context, fiscal 2025 will begin in April 2024:

Looking ahead, fiscal year 2025 is a highly anticipated year for our company,” the statement reads. Over the past several years, we have been preparing our business to launch an incredibly strong portfolio of projects that we believe will take our company to the greatest levels of success. In fiscal 2025, we expect to enter this new era with the launch of several groundbreaking titles that we believe will set new standards in our industry and enable us to achieve over $8 billion in net bookings and over $1 billion in unrestricted adjusted operating cash flow. We expect to maintain this momentum by delivering higher levels of operating results in fiscal 2026 and beyond.

While Take-Two doesn’t explicitly mention Grand Theft Auto here, it’s hard to imagine any other franchise doing this work for them. First, Take-Two’s net bookings last fiscal year were $5.3 billion — a record annual high. Notably, this record was reached thanks to Zynga contributions it received last year. Before that, Take-Two’s regular annual net bookings were looking close to $3 billion, and they’re steadily rising — it took the acquisition of a major mobile developer to see them jump over $1 billion in the space of a single year.

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So to hit the $8 billion goal, Take-Two would need to make significant acquisitions, release roughly twice the amount of games it had historically, or launch at least one massive shooter. Notably, Take-Two expects to do better in acquisitions the following year, something that seems impossible without something like GTA Online built on the foundations of an entirely new GTA game to boost its revenue. It’s hard to imagine any other franchise, or even multiple new games combined, doing these kinds of numbers.

I asked Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick about my theory on today’s call before its earnings announcement, and he declined to confirm or deny it, noting that it’s not Take-Two’s practice to talk about specific undisclosed addresses in earnings reports like this.

Grand Theft Auto V remains the best-selling single game of all time, and has consistently sold nearly five million units per quarter over the past several years. It achieved this again last quarter, with total unit sales reaching 180 million, and GTA Online continues to be a major revenue driver for Take-Two. Developer Rockstar confirmed that GTA 6 was in active development last year, but has officially remained silent about its progress. A massive leak late last year showed some of the unfinished game, but Zelnick told IGN a few months later that while this was an “emotional matter” for the developers, it didn’t affect the works.

Rebecca Valentine is a senior reporter at IGN. You can find her on Twitter @employee.

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