Grand Theft Auto 6, once meant to be available on gaming consoles, well, now, has been pushed further down the road from its already delayed target of May to November 2026. Take-Two announced the news in its earnings call on Thursday, but what it didn't announce—and hasn't even hinted at, since confirming the game was in development back in 2022—is when or even if GTA 6 will be released on PC.
We have little reason to doubt the game will come to PC eventually. Based on GTA Online's enduring popularity on Steam, where I'm pretty sure it's maintained a position on Steam's top 100 most-played games chart every single day for the last 10 years, it's a foregone conclusion. That's an extra couple billy in Take-Two's pocket at least.
But when?
So far, every trailer and public statement about GTA 6 says it's coming to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. If Rockstar follows the same playbook it took with its last two games, that means the earliest we're going to see a PC release is November 2027.
And that's the best-case precedent, which would mirror Red Dead Redemption 2. The open world western released on consoles in October 2018 and on the Epic Games Store in November 2019 (it was exclusive for a month before coming to Steam). Whew, that is a long time away.
But it's sooner than we'll see GTA 6 on PC if it follows GTA 5's path. The last Grand Theft Auto was a console exclusive for a full 19 months, first releasing in September of 2013 and finally coming to PC in April 2015. That's why I'm making peace with the possibility that it could be well into 2028 before we can call GTA 6 a computer game.
It could be that those points of comparison aren't very relevant anymore. Game budgets and development timelines have ballooned enormously; perhaps part of why GTA 6 is taking so long is that Rockstar is quietly planning a PC release alongside consoles, or just a few months later.
I doubt it, though. They know a lot of people will double dip on console and PC versions given enough of a gap. And launching the next iteration of GTA Online on consoles will be a herculean effort even before taking the added challenge of PC hackers and cheaters into account.
With the delay, Rockstar's likely not going to be talking about the game for the next six months or so. Maybe the company can use that quiet period to properly explain why it just fired more than 30 developers in what the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain has called "one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry," because its claim that they were all leaking confidential information sure doesn't seem to pass muster.
