Out in 2025 on PS5 and Xbox Series S/X, GTA VI takes us back to a bigger and richer Vice City.
Akhil Arora, an OpenCritic “top critic” and former The Game Awards juror, who has been reporting on video games since 2015. He has written for NDTV and SlashFilm.
GTA VI—due in late 2025 on the latest Xbox and PlayStation consoles—is set to offer an expanded take on what Rockstar Games attempted with GTA Vice City in 2002. It will also give us the first female lead in a Grand Theft Auto game in a quarter of a century. A former convict with an ankle monitor, Lucia was introduced in the first GTA 6 trailer working with a partner in crime akin to Bonnie and Clyde. The next chapter in the revered open-world franchise has been in development for years, though an official confirmation from Rockstar came only in early 2022. Here’s everything we know so far about GTA 6.
When will GTA 6 release?
On May 16, 2024, Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two Interactive—the parent company of Rockstar Games—revealed in a quarterly earnings call that GTA 6 would be released in the fall of 2025. Or autumn, as the rest of the world calls it.
At one point, Rockstar was allegedly aiming for an early 2025 launch. But when Rockstar saw how development was progressing, the target was moved. The current fall 2025 release window also makes sense from the US holiday season standpoint. For now, GTA VI is on track to hit that target.
GTA 6 on PC?
As of now, as the official press release states, GTA VI is only coming to “PlayStation 5 computer entertainment systems and Xbox Series X|S games and entertainment systems” in 2025. Rockstar had a console-first approach for both GTA 5 and GTA 4 as well. The PC port for GTA 4 took less than eight months after the console debut while it was a much longer wait—19 months—for GTA 5.
GTA 6 will likely follow that tried and tested route. And going by comments from former Rockstar developers, it’s going to be a while this time around. It could be “a long time” before we see GTA VI on PC, as per Mike York who used to work at Rockstar Games. If you cannot wait months (or probably years) to play GTA 6, you might want to get your hands on a PS5 or Xbox Series X/S by the end of 2025.
GTA 6 trailer
The first—and as yet only—trailer for GTA VI arrived on December 5, 2023, and has since been watched nearly 200 million times on YouTube. The 90-second trailer was short on talk—just 35 words are spoken in total—and heavily relied on the Tom Petty song “Love Is a Long Road” from his 1989 solo album Full Moon Fever.
A second trailer for GTA 6 is expected later in 2024.
GTA 6 leaks
Over a year before the first official footage, on September 18, 2022, a massive GTA VI leak hit GTAForums. Journalists confirmed with sources at Rockstar that the footage—showing about 50 minutes from an in-development build—was genuine and that it was taken from several stages of development. Take-Two issued widespread takedown notices and managed to scrub any presence of the leak from all visible corners of the internet.
The following day, Rockstar issued a statement and confirmed it was hacked: “We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto. […] We are extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you all in this way.”
On December 4, 2023, a low-quality version of the first GTA 6 trailer was also leaked, forcing Rockstar to drop the official thing slightly ahead of time.
GTA VI setting: Vice City
The original GTA Vice City, released in 2002, was set in 1986. However, the revamped version—GTA VI—is aiming for a modern-day setting. But Vice City won’t be the only location in GTA 6.
As Rockstar revealed in its official announcement, the next GTA game “heads to the state of Leonida, home to the neon-soaked streets of Vice City and beyond in the biggest, most immersive evolution of the Grand Theft Auto series yet.” The keyword I want you to focus on is “beyond”.
Also, what’s with Leonida? Though it’s clearly based on Florida, Rockstar has opted to name the state that Vice City is part of after the guy who led the first European expedition to the Florida peninsula. His name was Juan Ponce de León—hence Leonida.
GTA 6 map
Thanks to the leaks and what we’ve seen in the trailer, we expect at least five cities in GTA VI: Hamlet, Vice Beach, Vice City, Waning Sands, and Port Gellhorn. Vice City is loosely based on Miami, as you already know. Of course, we’ll get all-new areas of Vice City too. Vice Beach is named for the real-life city of Miami Beach while fans have deduced that Port Gellhorn is based after Panama City.
This expansion of the greater Vice City area sounds similar to what Rockstar did with Los Santos between GTA 5 and GTA San Andreas. While the latter offered Los Santos as one of three cities, GTA 5 reimagined Los Santos and its surrounding areas in much more detail. GTA 6 looks set to do so with Vice City, offering a whole new perspective on what we saw in the 2002 game.
As yet, there’s no official map though. I wouldn’t expect one until much closer to release, given how protective Rockstar is.
GTA 6 price and pre-order
While there’s no official word on the game’s pricing, it’s worth noting that Take-Two introduced the $70 price point—with NBA 2K21 for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S—that’s now become the industry standard for the biggest games.
Given Grand Theft Auto’s massive popularity, could the publisher seek to raise it further? Might we see $80 be explored as the base price? Anything is possible with GTA VI. After all, GTA 5 has sold over 190 million units to date since its 2013 launch. Despite being a decade old, it has continued to sell well.
As for GTA 6 pre-orders, all we can do is speculate based on GTA 5. Pre-orders for GTA 5 were opened on November 5, 2012—at that point, the game was scheduled to release in Q2 2013. There wasn’t even a month, let alone an exact date. (It eventually ended up being pushed to September 17, 2013.)
If Rockstar were to follow that strategy, I would imagine pre-orders for GTA VI would open in spring 2025. Of course, Grand Theft Auto is arguably a bigger brand now than it was in 2012—as if that’s somehow possible—so I wouldn’t be surprised if Take-Two picked an earlier pre-order date.
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What do you think?