GTA 6: What We Know About Rockstar’s Record-Breaking Launch
Rockstar Games has dropped fresh footage promoting the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, filling in more detail on what analysts expect to be the most expensive video game ever made, with development costs estimated above $1bn (£866m).
The trailer reconfirmed a release date of 19 November across PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, after two previous delays pushed the game back from its original autumn 2025 target and then from May 2026. Rockstar has said the extra time was needed to deliver the “polish fans had come to expect and deserve.” Pre-orders opened at midnight on 25 June, with pre-loading for console owners available from 12 November. Pricing runs to £69.99/$79.99 standard, or £89.99/$99.99 for an ultimate edition with extra vehicles and weapons; physical copies will ship with a download code rather than a disc. There is no confirmed date for a PC release, no word on Nintendo Switch 2, and the game’s PlayStation Store listing currently describes it as a “single-player experience” – though an online mode, in the mould of the hugely successful GTA Online, is widely expected to follow eventually.
Story and setting
The new footage gave fans a look at missions involving protagonists Jason and Lucia – the series’ first ever playable female lead in a 3D game – and confirmed French electronic duo Justice as the game’s original score composers. Trailers and a Netflix preview so far suggest a Bonnie-and-Clyde-style story after “an easy score goes wrong,” set in the fictional state of Leonida, Rockstar’s version of Florida, with the Miami-inspired Vice City returning as its main city.
A long and costly road to release
Rockstar first confirmed it was working on a sixth GTA game in February 2022, nearly nine years after GTA 5 launched in September 2013 and went on to sell close to 230 million copies – though the studio spent part of that gap making Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018. Development has not been without turmoil: footage and images leaked after teenage hackers breached the company, and sacked workers at Rockstar North, the Edinburgh studio leading development, have accused the company of union-busting.
The stakes are high because of what the franchise already represents. Freelance games journalist Vic Hood says each entry has “continued to push technical and gameplay boundaries,” crediting GTA Online with helping “pioneer the live service model as we know it,” while also being “extremely culturally relevant” – Rockstar, she says, “has always had its finger on the pulse of music, entertainment, societal, political, celebrity, and online culture trends, and they’ve never shied away from satirising these things in GTA games.” British gaming entrepreneur Sir Ian Livingstone told the BBC’s Today programme the series – originally developed in Scotland – is “bigger than any film or song” and an “incredible achievement in interactive software.” That reputation helps explain why the two gameplay trailers released so far have already racked up roughly 447 million views combined.
Source: BBC News