GTA 6 delay was about Rockstar delivering its “creative vision with no limitations”, and Take-Two’s CEO sounds decently confident the game won’t slip again

Take-Two had its latest earnings call last night, so naturally CEO Strauss Zelnick has been asked a whole bunch of questions about GTA 6’s delay to May 2026. His explanation of the reasoning behind it is pretty much what you’d expect, and while he’s not fully committing, he at least sounds a bit confident in the game not catching another delay further down the road.

To be fair, there’s at least been trailer two and a whole info dump of screenshots for folks to be going through as they’ve settled in for the long wait.

Speaking to IGN, Zelnick was asked how confident he is in GTA 6 hitting that new date of May 26 next year. “I think historically when we set a specific date, generally speaking, we’ve been very good about reaching it,” was his answer.

So, no confirmation it definitely won’t end up being pushed back again, bit the exec at least sounds like he’s got a bit of faith it won’t now that Rockstar’s put a proper date on it.

As to why this delay was required in the first place, Zelnick said that it was a case of giving Rockstar extra time to deliver “its creative vision with no limitations”. “While of course, delays pain me — how could they not? — the most important thing to do is to support your teams in their search for perfection,” he added.

The exec said similar stuff in Take-Two’s latest earnings release itself, writing: “I believe affording Rockstar additional time for such a groundbreaking project is a worthy investment”, and also claiming that GTA 6 has become “the most anticipated entertainment property of all time” since its development properly kicked off back in 2020.

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Elsewhere, the company noted that pre-orders for Mafia: The Old Country are “off to a strong start” ahead of that game dropping in August, and revealed that it currently has plans to “deliver 25 titles throughout fiscal 2027 and 2028”. That number includes 17 “immersive core releases” including GTA 6 and the likes of NBA 2K, four mobile games, and four “new iterations of previously-released titles” – that last bit’s sparked a bit more speculation about the rumoured GTA 4 port.

So, the wait begins. If you’re looking for more GTA 6-related news, a fan re-created trailer two in GTA 5 the other day, which would have been a lot cooler if it didn’t sound like they may well have used AI to make Trevor sing Hot Together.