GTA 6 release date rumour is the news fans didn't want to hear

GTA 6 is as mythical a creation as The Elder Scrolls 6 at this point, and after seven years of waiting, we've finally got a new nugget of info about when we'll finally see the game come to light.

Rockstar has been keeping the momentum of GTA 5 going since its launch on the PS3 and Xbox 360, through to the PS4 and Xbox One, and now the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Both it (and Bethesda's Skyrim) have had an impressive stretch across consoles and generations, but gamers are eagerly awaiting the drop of GTA 6, and unfortunately, we're still a long ways off. 

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Games journalist Jason Schreier took to Twitter in May last year to say that GTA 6 is "years away", during a back and forth with a GTA insider going by Yan2295, who was confident that the game was further along in development than Schreier was suggesting. 

But now they're whistling a different tune on Twitter, saying that while the game is in development, it's "not coming soon", adding that they don't know when it will be announced or released. 

Given that Schreier's initial tweet was posted last year, the earliest possible date for GTA 6's launch would be 2022. But that seems decidedly optimistic, given that Rockstar's development cycle is pretty lengthy. Red Dead Redemption 2 was in development for eight years, while GTA 5 took just three, but the newest instalment in the franchise will be releasing on next gen hardware and PCs, so we're erring more towards the Red Dead 2 timeline than 2013's GTA 5.

Of course, there's also the fact that GTA 5 has been raking in a profit for years now, holding the title of the most successful entertainment product out there, making around $6 billion off the 110 million copies it's shifted. 

The budget for the title was $265 million, so GTA 5 has been Rockstar's golden goose for almost a decade, and it may not be worth retiring it just yet, when it's still squeezing out those tantalisingly profitable eggs. Either way, Rockstar doesn't need to rush the game out anytime soon, and it may release the new title a year or two into the current console cycle. 

Interestingly, both Yan2295 and fellow reddit leaker Tez2 have stated that other Rockstar sequels have been shelved to allow for the development of GTA 6, like Bully 2. Yan confirmed that this is the case in another reddit post, but as always, it's best to take these leaks with a pinch of salt. 

Source: via Tom's Guide