When Take-Two Interactive recently made a deal to buy mobile game company Zynga for $12.7 billion, it was announced with a press release that included a section on "Strategic Rationale and Stockholder Value Creation". Within that was the note, "Looking ahead, the combined company is expected to deliver a 14% compound annual growth rate… over the three-year period from Take-Two's Fiscal Years 2021 through 2024."
According to an analyst from investment banking firm Jefferies, quoted by Stephen Totilo of Axios, "there are only a handful of titles that can...provide management with the confidence to put out such a strong guidance; we believe there is at least one Rockstar IP set to be released by FY24". That was followed up by a quote from research analyst Doug Creutz of Cowen, who thinks this points to "a likely GTA 6 launch in FY24." If true, that could put the Grand Theft Auto 6 release date anywhere between the beginning of April 2023 and the end of March 2024.
Back in 2020, Take-Two's financials indicated its marketing spend would double in FY2024, which was interpreted by an analyst at the time as suggesting the same release window for GTA 6. A rep for the publisher denied it, however, saying that the figure represented marketing commitments to third-party companies rather than internal studios like Rockstar.
Whenever GTA 6 does come out, we may well have to wait a little longer for a PC version, as was the case with GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2. Although our own Chris Livingston contributed to our list of bold predictions for 2022 by not only suggesting that 2023, a full decade after GTA 5's initial launch, would be the perfect time to drop a trailer announcing GTA 6, but that it would come out on PC and console simultaneously. I guess they do have that Rockstar Launcher for a reason.
