Even a legendary developer like Hideo Kojima isn't immune to considerations over the GTA 6 release date, as he's acknowledged in a recent podcast. Luckily, though, Death Stranding 2 is quite far along in development, and its June release date was settled according to its own dev schedule.
"Some are saying GTA may or may not release in November," Kojima said in a podcast recorded before GTA 6's delay to May was announced, as translated by Genki on Twitter. "As soon as it would be announced for November, everyone would move out of they way. For instance, if a new Mission Impossible movie were to release in May, others wouldn't be able to compete with that so would move somewhere else."
It's perhaps the most Kojima analogy imaginable to compare GTA to Mission Impossible, but regardless, it doesn't seem these concerns had much of an effect on Death Stranding 2. According to Genki's translation, the game's release date was decided "a long time ago," and while Kojima himself wanted a September launch, it seems there was no need to delay it any further.
Hideo Kojima gave a development update on Death Stranding 2: via @koji10_tbs - He says the game remains at 95% complete at the time of recording (mid-April) as a lot of minor bugs popped up so they are still in the final bug fixing stage.- But they have already submitted a… pic.twitter.com/ZOsIkmdEREMay 7, 2025
Kojima said that Death Stranding 2 was 95% complete at the time the podcast was recorded in mid-April, and it seems much of the work left to be done is down to bug-fixing. However, while Kojima's endeavoring to make sure DS2 is as bug-free as possible, even he'll admit that some minor bugs are unavoidable in an open-world game.
Broadly, publishers trying to set the release dates for their games are breathing a sigh of relief now that GTA 6 has been confirmed for May 2026. As that release window remained an open question for months, the sentiment from the industry was that "GTA 6 is basically a huge meteor, and we will just stay clear of the blast zone." That's a lot easier now that we know where the impact site is gonna be centered.
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