Get Ready To Do The Silksong Release Date Shuffle All Over Again:...

When Rockstar moves, everyone else shuffles to make room.

Pity the poor studio who dares release day-and-date with Grand Theft Auto 6. If you thought the countless indies who scrambled out of the way of Silksong's launch in August was eye-opening, imagine the feeling of doom that would arise from having GTA 6 suddenly land in your release window. For studios planning a November 2026 launch, that nightmare became reality today when Take-Two announced a new delay.

GTA 6 was originally slated to release on consoles in Fall 2025—around now!—before its initial delay to May 2026. If you look at the major games releasing in May 2026 as of now, you'll notice there's basically nothing because everything is shambling to escape Rockstar's orbit. And while it's true that May isn't usually a busy month for blockbuster game releases, in 2025 we saw Doom: The Dark Ages and Revenge of the Savage Planet hit PC, both of which would be cremated alive in a battle against GTA.

Speaking anonymously to The Game Business on the announcement of GTA 6's first delay, the "boss of one of the world's biggest game publishers" admitted that Rockstar sucks a lot of money and time out of the market and that "we don't want to be anywhere near that."

Another anonymous studio boss speaking to the same outlet described the futility of the scenario: "GTA 6 is basically a huge meteor and we will just stay clear of the blast zone," they said. "We will nudge our releases back or forward three weeks to avoid it. Of course, the problem is everyone is going to do the same. So three to four weeks before or after GTA 6, you’re going to get a load of games dropping content in what they believe will be the safe zone."

Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson has alluded to the difficulties of launching alongside GTA 6. During an investors call in May, he was asked how Rockstar's delay into 2026 affected the prospects of Battlefield 6. "We wouldn’t launch into a window that we thought truncated the value that we’ve invested into the franchise, or the value that we think our players will derive from it once they jump in and start playing," he said. "I think now, without going too far, we believe that window is clearer than it was before and we feel very good about launching Battlefield in [FY] 2026."

The impact radius will nuke mostly everything that dares release within a month either side of it.

Would Battlefield 6, no matter how good it has proven to be, fare as well if it had been released next to GTA

Source: PC Gamer