Take-Two boss ‘highly confident’ in Grand Theft Auto 6 release timing

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has said he’s “highly confident” of hitting Grand Theft Auto 6’s recently announced launch window.

Updating its financial guidance last week, the company narrowed the game’s release window from calendar 2025 to the fall/autumn of next year.

During a subsequent interview with CNBC, Zelnick discussed the process of deciding product release dates, and how companies know when the time is right from a creative perspective.

“There are elements that you can actually measure, for example the number of bugs in a title, and every one of us will make sure we have as few bugs as possible before we launch,” he said.

“However, in the case of an extraordinary title, for which there are extraordinary expectations, it’s not really about bugs, it’s about creating an experience that no one’s seen before, and Rockstar Games seeks perfection in what they do. And perfection is indeed hard to measure, it really is more subjective than objective.”

Rockstar has a history of announcing and then delaying game release dates. Perhaps with this in mind, Zelnick was asked how confident he is in hitting Grand Theft Auto 6’s fall 2025 launch window.

“Well, there is slippage in the industry and we’re not immune from that,” he replied. “However, we narrowed the timing because we are highly confident in that timing.”

The first Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer was released in December, confirming a planned 2025 release date. It racked up more than 100 million views in just two days, surpassing the lifetime views of GTA 5‘s debut trailer and making it one of the most-viewed trailers in YouTube history.

Take-Two said last week that Grand Theft Auto 5, which “reached $1 billion in retail sales faster than any other entertainment release in history,” has shipped approximately 200 million units since its release in 2013.