GTA 6 Might Be Coming Out as Soon as Next Year

ign.com:

Publisher Take-Two Interactive may have just teased the release window for the next entry in the biggest gaming franchise of all time: Grand Theft Auto 6. It could be on the way as soon as next year.

In a press release issued alongside its yearly earnings report, Take-Two shared projections for the coming years, including a massive projection for fiscal years 2025 and 2026. For context, fiscal 2025 will begin in April of 2024:

While Take-Two doesn't explicitly name Grand Theft Auto here, it's hard to imagine any other franchise doing this work for them. For one, Take-Two's net bookings this past fiscal year reached $5.3 billion - a record annual high. Notably, this record was reached thanks to the contributions of Zynga, which it acquired last year. Prior to this, Take-Two's regular annual net bookings were looking roughly in $3 billion ballpark and steadily rising - it took the acquisition of a major mobile developer to see them leap over $1 billion in the space of a single year.

So to achieve a goal of $8 billion, Take-Two would need to make significant acquisitions, or release nearly double the amount of games it historically has, or release at least one absolute behemoth of a game. Notably, Take-Two expects to do even better in its takings the following year, something that seems impossible without something like GTA Online built on the foundations of a brand new GTA game to propel its revenue sky high. It's hard to imagine any other franchise, or even multiple new games combined, doing these kinds of numbers.

I asked Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick about my theory on a call today ahead of its earnings announcement, and he declined to confirm or deny it, noting that it's not Take-Two's practice to talk about specific,