‘Grand Theft Auto 6’ Launch Date Mystery Clouds 2025 Release Calendar – Variety
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By
Kaare Eriksen
Media Analyst
French publisher Ubisoft announced last week it would delay “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” yet again, pushing the next entry in its long-running open-world franchise to March 20.
Alongside Capcom’s “Monster Hunter Wilds,” the next “Assassin’s Creed” title is the most high profile AAA game with an actual release date on 2025’s incredibly sparse calendar.
After March, no games at the AAA level have release dates. This is not for a lack of big games targeting 2025 windows but rather one massively anticipated title that has yet to define its own date.
Allegedly costing up to $2 billion to develop for more than a decade, “Grand Theft Auto 6” is such a too-big-to-fail game it has yet to commit to a specific date, despite indicating a 2025 release more than a year ago when it dropped its first and only trailer.
While doubts of another delay for “GTA 6” continue to coalesce, Rockstar and parent company Take-Two Interactive have yet to break from the goal of releasing it this year, with new job postings advertising the 2025 window.
That lack of commitment is exactly why many publishers behind big games expected in 2025 are reportedly reluctant to commit to release dates until they know for sure “GTA 6” is locked down to one, as the latter half of the year is typically when the gaming market gets very competitive.
For well over a decade, annual “Call of Duty” titles have released each fall to instant success that typically locks the Activision franchise in as the year’s No. 1 bestseller. Since 2009, only Rockstar’s “GTA 5” and “Red Dead Redemption 2” have broken that streak, as did Warner Bros.’ “Hogwarts Legacy” in 2023.
Circana will disclose 2024’s full-year leaderboard later this month, but “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6” is bound to be the winner on account of the records it shattered when it dropped in October.
“Assassin’s Creed Shadows” was supposed to be released in “November,” but Ubisoft hastily shifted the game’s release to February 2025 after disclosing August’s “Star Wars Outlaws” sold poorly. Alongside the announcement of its delay to March, Ubisoft confirmed it is exploring a sale after reports that Chinese giant and Riot Games parent Tencent is circling the company emerged last fall.
Take-Two and Rockstar’s reluctance to commit to a final date for “GTA 6” are understandable, even if it frustrates the rest of the industry. The company has cut around $50 million in costs through multiple rounds of layoffs and the sale of its Private Division label, meaning the resources to get “GTA 6” out the door took a hit late in its development.
And because “GTA 5” is also one of the industry’s leading live services, other resources are still needed to maintain that game until its sixth mainline title takes over.
The only franchise known to match the massive, expected budget for “GTA 6” is, unsurprisingly, “Call of Duty.” A recent court filing revealed the development costs of three older “Call of Duty” titles: $450 million for 2015’s “Black Ops 3,” $640 million for 2019’s “Modern Warfare” and $700 million for 2020’s “Black Ops Cold War.” Such brazen figures are intimidating to any company trying to squeeze in new games among the cream of the crop.
It’s no wonder other publishers are in a holding pattern for finalizing their 2025 release slates, especially at a time when “Assassin’s Creed” vacated its own release pattern last year to extend the game’s fine-tuning and give it room to breathe away from such mammoth franchises as “Call of Duty.”
Last spring, Newzoo revealed the extent to which forever games like “Fortnite,” “Minecraft,” “GTA 5” and “Call of Duty” titles consume the greatest share of playtime at the expense of new titles trying to emerge in the space, showing such live services accounted for 60% of all playtime in 2023. The Business of Entertainment
