New GTA 6 leak alleges announcement this year, release 2023

This is, all things considered, a very strange take, and not one we'd see anyone knowledgeable about the topic to share. Even if we ignore the other 'reigning' big GTA 6 leak from Jason Schreier and Tom Henderson, a pair of industry insiders and journalists with even harder hitting legitimacy and track records, stating that GTA 6 won't be announced or released for several years, it doesn't add up.

GTA 5's Expanded and Enhanced port for next-gen consoles is launching this March, and announcing a sequel within the same year would definitely harm sales of the fourth re-release of the game. Take-Two Interactive is clearly keen on milking GTA 5's seemingly inexhaustible popularity and marketability, and the company is famously averse to making its own titles compete.

While GTA Online going standalone is definitely setting the scene for GTA 6, allowing the hugely profitable multiplayer mode to live on even after the franchise has moved forward, the amount of additions and changes going into Expanded & Enhanced's single player portion mean that Rockstar won't trample over the new release with a bombshell GTA 6 announcement months later.

All previous insider info from reputable sources has painted the GTA 6 project as preliminary, or still in early development, with years and years of work to go before it is anywhere near announcement-ready. This tracks with the sort of development load Rockstar was under in the past few years, and their approach to releases.

The statement that their release pattern would suggest GTA 6 launching a year after the reveal is also off-base - sure, they tend to announce their titles a year before planned launch, but you don't really get Rockstar titles without at least a one-year delay. Even if GTA 6 would be announced this year, considering the state of the world and the industry, that would mean a 2024 release at the soonest.

We're not really sure how such a prediction, so utterly contrary to both previous legitimate leaks and logic, would come from such a previously reputable source - which oddly enough is what gives rise to doubt. Why would one of the best known names in the GTA leaker sphere lend their reputation to such an absurd claim? Is it, unlikely as it seems, actually true?

While we definitely doubt fans will see any official GTA 6 news this year - or even the next - we'd sure like to be proven wrong. However, this might be the reminder the community needed that no matter the track record, you should never believe leakers outright.