Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games, has lowered its earnings guidance for the fiscal year ending in March 2025.
The move has led Wedbush Securities analysts Nick McKay and Michael Pachter to believe that the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 has “slipped out of FY:25, in-line with our earlier expectation.”
The game was previously expected to be released in early 2025, given earlier earnings guidance from Rockstar suggesting it was anticipating a major release during that timeframe.
The trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 was released in December 2023 and was viewed over 90 million times in its first 24 hours. While the trailer provided a 2025 release window, no specific date was confirmed.
The delay is likely due to the complexity of the game and the challenges of developing for multiple platforms. Grand Theft Auto 6 is expected to be the largest and most ambitious game in the series to date.
It may also be related to Take-Two’s new plans to implement another “significant cost reduction program across our entire business to maximize our margins, while still investing for growth.”
A previous “cost reduction program” was announced in February 2023 and saw the company trim down in an effort to make annual savings of $50 million. While that program led to a round of layoffs the following month, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told IGN that this new cost reduction program wouldn’t involve new layoffs.
Analysts believe that the delay could have a negative impact on Take-Two’s stock price. And for gamers, this means we’ll have to wait a little bit longer to get our hands on Grand Theft Auto 6.
