People are still buying new copies of GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 and until GTA 6 comes out, those numbers stand to only go up.

You’ve no doubt already heard that GTA 6 has been hit with a second delay. It was going to be out in May next year, but now that wait’s been extended all the way until next November.

By the time GTA 6 does come out, it will have been over 13 years since GTA 5. But while we don’t doubt there’s mounting pressure within Rockstar Games to get it finished, publisher Take-Two Interactive is in a rare position where they can take as long as they like with development.

Despite how long it’s been, GTA 5 still keeps making money for the company, and the latest sales figures from Take-Two are almost shocking in terms of how much the game is still bringing in.

How much has GTA 5 sold?

Speaking with The Game Business, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said GTA 5 has now sold over 220 million units. As a reminder, it had crossed the 200 million mark by May 2024, meaning more than 20 million people have bought a copy of GTA 5 in the last 18 months.

GTA 5 has been the best-selling traditional video game for years (behind only things like Minecraft and Roblox), but it remains staggering that its sales figures are higher than the populations of entire countries.

It had sold double the amount of people living in the UK back in 2021, and these latest figures mean it’s also surpassed the population of Brazil. The next highest population count is Nigeria, according to Worldometer, at over 230 million, and it seems certain GTA 5 will pass that too.

Between the extended wait for GTA 6 and its status as the most anticipated game of all time, it wouldn’t be shocking if more people than ever buy copies of GTA 5 over the next year, just to see what all the fuss is about.

GTA Online is the most important factor in GTA 5’s longevity and player retention, with Zelnick adding that it too has seen a welcome boon in membership.

‘We continue to supply content to GTA Online, and in fact we’ve had terrific results there,’ said Zelnick. ‘And GTA+ continues to grow its membership. In fact, it’s had 20% growth year-over-year.’

The player count is set to rise further, as a new rumour claims GTA 5 will return to the PlayStation Plus game catalogue on November 18, meaning anyone with a PlayStation Plus Extra or Premium subscription can try the game out at no extra cost.

This is according to the ever reliable bilbill-kun at Dealabs, though they suspect GTA 5 won’t be a permanent addition. As a reminder, GTA 5 has been added to the PlayStation Plus catalogue twice before – once in December 2023 and again in November 2024 – but both times it was delisted after six months.

That may be all the time it needs to get new players hooked and encourage them to just purchase a copy of GTA 5 to keep forever.

In related news, Take-Two’s latest earnings report shows that Red Dead Redemption 2 has also hit a new milestone, having now sold more than 79 million units since its 2018 launch.

This now makes it the second best-selling traditional video game of all time, replacing Mario Kart 8 with its total of 76.66 million.

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Everyone knew there was a good chance GTA 6 wouldn’t make its May release date and now Rockstar Games has confirmed it won’t be out until the end of 2026.

One day GTA 6 will be released, and you’ll be able to play the most anticipated video game of all time, but that day is no longer going to be May 26, 2026.

The May date was also a delay, but now Rockstar Games has confirmed that the new release date is November 19, 2026. Although, of course, there’s no guarantee it will make that date either, since GTA 5 is still raking in money for both Rockstar and parent company Take-Two.

This time there was even less explanation than usual for the delay, with a short tweet that said simply: ‘We are sorry for adding additional time to what we realise has been a long wait, but these extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve.’

While the previous delay had been widely expected, given the long gap from one trailer to another, there’d been no prominent rumours of any recent troubles. In fact, there’s been very little gossip at all over the last few months, so this all comes as a big surprise.

What is the new release date of GTA 6?

The news initially broke via Take-Two’s latest fiscal report, which quietly announced the new November 19, 2026 date just before the tweet was posted.

As before, and as is common for Rockstar Games, it will initially only be released for consoles, in this case PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. There will be a PC version, but it’s not been confirmed yet and won’t now happen until at least 2027.

Since the news was part of Take-Two’s financial report there was an immediate, negative effect on the publisher’s stock price, which is down over 9% at time of writing and still falling.

It will probably recover but if there’s anything that’s going to make Rockstar stick to its latest release date it’s Take-Two insisting they don’t tank their stock price again.

You can imagine exactly how well fans have taken the news, with the primary emotions being surprise and anger – and a need to express both via the medium of memes.

‘I just smashed my TV in front of 30 guests at my party because of these constant delays. My wife just took our crying kids and said they’re all spending the week at a hotel. This delay has ruined my life and my expectations. I can’t handle this anymore. Goodbye Rockstar. I am no longer a fan,’ said PrimitiveAK on X – he’s almost certainly joking, but everyone seemed to appreciate the sentiment.

We’re not sure if it’s a new thing or not but several comments made reference to the chances of the second coming of Christ happening before GTA 6, while someone called FERAS complained ‘Damn it! I became a father, and I might even become a grandfather, and your game still isn’t out yet!’

Several company accounts also got involved, with indie publisher Devolver Digital asking if Rockstar wanted a new publisher, and Domino’s pizza suggesting that they could help with delivering the game.

Nevertheless, a fair amount of fans were accepting, and even welcoming, of the delay. ‘I speak for everyone when we say take your good time, we want a finished game and game of the century so you can take an additional 10 years if you need to,’ said Woody.

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One of the key developers behind GTA has praised the ‘amazing’ modern Zelda games on the Nintendo Switch, comparing their impact to the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

It’s almost too obvious to need saying but The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and its sequel Tears Of The Kingdom are two of the best video games ever made, but it’s always interesting when someone of note within the industry echoes that sentiment in an eloquent way.

Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser, who served as lead writer on the GTA and Red Dead Redemption games before he left the company in 2020, has done exactly that via an unexpected comparison to the works of legendary film director Alfred Hitchcock.

Speaking in an interview with Lex Fridman, Houser discussed the early years of 3D on the Nintendo 64 and original PlayStation, remarking how ‘all of those early 3D games were very amazing when you first saw them’.

As the conversation turned to the impact of 1998’s The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, in setting the standard for 3D games, Houser brought up the most recent entries, Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom, and how they sit within the industry.

‘The new ones, they almost, to me, feel like Hitchcock,’ Houser said. ‘They’re just speaking the language of video games. You know everything’s going to work this way and that way. It’s quite systemic, but how it all glues together is so amazing, it feels like when you watch a Hitchcock film.’

You might think thwacking Bokoblins in Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is quite a different experience from watching Psycho or Strangers On A Train, but Houser goes on to explain how they both represent a masterclass of expression unique to each medium.

‘It’s not reality, he’s speaking the language of cinema…with a very strong accent almost,’ he added. ‘It’s very, very cinematic, it’s not realism at all. And that’s what those Zelda games kind of feel to me, like that they are these amazing things that could only be video games. They couldn’t be anything else.’

In the past, Houser has said how Super Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina Of Time had a profound impact on GTA’s transition to 3D, with 2001’s GTA 3.

Speaking to the New York Times in 2012, Houser said: ‘Anyone who makes 3D games who says they’ve not borrowed something from Mario or Zelda is lying – from the games on Nintendo 64, not necessarily the ones from today.’

Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom might only work as video games, but Nintendo is trying to expand the IP into movies. A live action Zelda film is slated to release on May 7, 2027, but we’ll bet every rupee in the world it won’t be as good as Rear Window.

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