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-Petsey Neshko

WTF is up with GTA6?

GTA VI RELYING NEWS ANNOUNCEMENT? – OR JUST RUMORS NOT SO REVEALING?

“I love rumors! Facts can be so misleading, but rumors, true or false, are often revealing.”

- Hans Landa (Inglorious Basterds)

Over the last few days, the internet is bombed with articles and rumors about hints of GTA VI (Grand Theft Auto) release date. Whether it will be officially announced soon this year, or not earlier than 2023 or 2024. It’s been almost 7 years since the release of GTA V, and now after all this time the water is boiling and GTA fans are eager to know when their favorite open-world game would be available to play. Has the game news misused our eagerness and impatience to play and clickbaited us into opening misleading rumors about its release year and date like a fish on a hook? Or we are looking into a piece of concrete news and conclusion? Let’s see what we know so far.

History of the GTA series

The year 1997, while Titanic movie is airing in the cinemas and the first Harry Potter book publishing in the libraries, in the gaming world the first GTA game is released.

Just two years later in 1999 GTA 2 comes out to be followed by one of the first very famous open-world games GTA III, again, released two years after the last one, in 2001. This game was just the overture of what was about to come, looking into a beginning chapter of amazing open-world games. Just one year later GTA: Vice City is released to be followed by the timeless masterpiece of the whole gaming industry – GTA: San Andreas, built on the brilliance of Vice City.

This two years waiting for GTA game release tradition was broken, when it took four years for Rockstar game development company to release GTA IV, which was not taken so serious for its self-seriousness story, but the martial artist players would disagree with me because, on the other hand, this game had a huge step up regarding the fighting aspect – combat and physics. And finally, it took five years for Rockstar to develop the last GTA game, and in my opinion, the second-best game in the GTA games series – GTA V, in 2013.

Judging by the awesomeness of GTA V it seemed worthy and fair waiting for 5 years for its release. But now, it’s been almost 7 years since that game shook the gaming world and not even one single concrete news announcement about the release of the new GTA VI, and all until now when finally some rumors started spreading, and if we take into consideration Hans Landa’s words – rumors can often be revealing. 

 The first solid rumor of GTA VI release window

It’s 2020, the year when we expect the release of the two most anticipated new consoles – Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X. And where there is a steam, something is cooking as well. Alongside the awaited release of these two consoles, the rumors started spreading of the new GTA VI game, the game which we all want to see playable for these two consoles.

The first solid piece of news we have here is from Kotaku report after the investigations of Rockstar’s way of working. According to this report, GTA VI is early in development as of April 2020. Additionally, it seems that the Rockstar’s plan for the game is to release a smaller not so complete game first, and afterward to provide the gamers with proper updates which would enable them to enjoy the full complete version of it.

The former president of Rockstar North, Leslie Benzies, teased the next series entry back in 2013 with Develop magazine:

“We don’t know what GTA VI will be, but we’ve got some ideas. We’ve got about 45 years worth of ideas we want to do. We’ll pick the right ones. It comes from the idea first.”

So, what can we assume so far is that one way or another GTA VI is happening, but so far not a single solid evidence of a concrete year of release?

If we take the report of Kotaku as an authentic source and judging by the part “early in development as of April 2020”, then it’s still hard to predict the accurate release date or even the year, and if we make any guesses, I would say no earlier than late 2021 or early 2022.

 Newest rumors claiming the game won’t be released until 2023-2024?

Following the logic of the marketing budgets with the announcement of Take-Two company planning to spend incredible 89 million US dollars during 12 months period starting from April 2023 until March 2024, we might not be able to enjoy GTA VI before 2023-2024, according to analyst Jeff Cohen.

And the question is: How does marketing budget affects the release date? Well, the last time Take-Two announced spending an enormous amount of money for marketing purposes accurately predicted the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2 before that game’s announcement. According to that logic, rumors started spreading that this 89 million US dollars announcement might be for the GTA VI, and since this is planned to be spent not earlier than April 2023 until March 2024, then we might be looking for an other gap of 3-4 years of waiting to play one of our favorite open-world games.

This news was also noted by the video game journalist Jason Schreier who posted “I told you so” tweet. Basically he said that when he predicted that the release of GTA VI is still a few years away. The inside developers denied it claiming that the game is 70% done, and now he used this Take-Two piece of information as a solid proof that his claiming about the game release is true after all.

Are we looking at professional journalism here or just a seasoned journalist who wants to prove that he was right all along? He indeed predicted the outcome of the Red Dead Redemption release, and many other game predictions turned out to be true. And if he is the Mystic Mac of gaming journalism, can we completely rely on his claiming and not expect GTA VI earlier than 2023-2024?

I believe that way Rockstar company would not share a very important piece of news with Schreier, because that way he would be the spoiler of the insanely huge news and take all the shine and credit for himself. Instead of Rockstar game development company themselves announcing the news of the game release when we least expect and make a complete “Nuclear” explosion with that.

What can we conclude from all of this? 

I think we can surely assume that we won’t see GTA VI in 2020. In my opinion, the best scenario would be if we have the concrete announcement by the end of 2020 and the release of the game by the mid or the end of 2021. Many would make the argument that these 89 million US dollars are meant for this game, but still, there is not even a single concrete piece of evidence for that. There are maybe a hundred names of games to be released during that period, so how can we assume that the budget is meant to be spent for GTA VI and not for any other? If we go according to how it predicted the release of Red Dead Redemption 2, then maybe yes. But as for solid proofs and concrete news about it, we have nothing. Maybe Hans Landa is right about the rumors, but even then the rumors are just often and not always revealing.