Take-Two shares tank after GTA 6's delay, CEO Strauss Zelnick assures panicky investors it'll still make more money than god and it's 'steadfast in our commitment to excellence'

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All to the lifeboats; women and children first.

gta 6 trailer
(Image credit: Rockstar)

Rockstar went and dropped a bomb on what was otherwise quite a sleepy Friday when it announced that—whoops, sorry—it was actually going to release GTA 6's console version on May 26, 2026, rather than in its previously announced release window of autumn 2025.

Which sure made game devs hoping to release something this year breathe a sigh of relief, but didn't much please investors in Rockstar's parent company Take-Two Interactive. Per the FT, Take-Two's share price dropped 15% in the aftermath of Rockstar's characteristically austere news post announcing the delay.

So it's no wonder Take-Two put out its own press release concurrently with Rockstar's announcement—it anticipated just this kind of reaction. This release, though, was less focused on players and more aimed at convincing its bug-eyed investors that the sky wasn't falling. "We support fully Rockstar Games taking additional time to realize their creative vision for Grand Theft Auto 6," said Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick.

Zelnick said that "While we take the movement of our titles seriously and appreciate the vast and deep global anticipation for Grand Theft Auto 6," it's also "steadfast in our commitment to excellence." Releasing GTA 6 in that original autumn window, it seems, would not have upheld that standard for excellence, so off to 2026 it goes.

I wonder what Florida Joker thinks about all this. (Image credit: Rockstar)

But Take-Two urges its shareholders not to freak out, and promises it'll still make more money than anyone could possibly know what to do with even with GTA's release date slipping across the horizon. Take-Two's took some time and "reiterated its expectations that the Company will achieve sequential increases in, and record levels of, Net Bookings in Fiscal 2026 and 2027," which is to say it's still gonna sell a record volume of stuff in this fiscal year (2026) and next fiscal year (2027, they make this stuff confusing on purpose, I reckon).

"As we continue to release our phenomenal pipeline," Zelnick reassured investors, "we expect to deliver a multi-year period of growth in our business and enhanced value for our shareholders." Well, that's a weight off my mind.

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Joshua Wolens
Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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