The past few years have been huge for Take-Two Interactive, but it hasn't always been for the better. Two years ago, the company drew the ire of fans after pulling the original versions of Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, from Steam and other platforms.
A few months later, Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition came out as a broken mess of a game. Then, GTA 6 suffered a massive leak late last year, and finally, the company's main cash cow, Grand Theft Auto Online, became the victim of a dangerous online exploit that was only recently fixed.
So much seems to have gone wrong for the GTA publisher and things could be about to get worse judging from TTWO's most recent earnings report.
But, the silver lining here is that Take-Two might have clue'd us in on when GTA 6 might come out.
We've known about the publisher's massive release pipeline through FY2025 for a while and most assumed that GTA 6 was hiding in plain sight. This might still be the case. It might also be that GTA 6 isn't in the earnings reports because it isn't in the cards until after FY2025. This is in line with the recent rumors that Rockstar is already sitting on a complete build of GTA 6.
Most industry experts agree that polishing takes nearly just as long, if not longer, than the active development of a game. Of course, it would be unreasonable to assume that GTA 6 will take 16 years to polish (it's believed that production on GTA 6 began in 2015) but 2-3 years of polishing might do the trick.
Keep in mind that Grand Theft Auto 5 is a tough act to follow. In the same earnings report, Take-Two confirmed that GTA 5 has surpassed 175 million units sold, after selling another 5 million last quarter.
No one's expecting GTA 6 to outsell GTA 5 anytime soon, if at all, but you can't blame Take-Two and Rockstar for wanting to avoid a Cyberpunk 2077 situation with arguably its biggest game of the current decade, if not ever.
Speaking of Take-Two, it appears that the company is becoming more open to exploring Web3 opportunities in the future. TTWO's acquisition of Zynga last year could make this easier and less experimental for them. It remains to be seen how Take-Two will approach its Web3 investments going forward, knowing that the majority of the gaming industry, including Rockstar Games, isn't in favor of it.
