The Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB) and Rockstar Games have traded more blows following a preliminary tribunal hearing this week. There, the IWGB asked a judge to grant the fired Grand Theft Auto 6 developers interim relief.
The year 2026 is shaping up to be a total collision course of legacy sequels and high-budget gambles that might actually pay off. We are looking at a calendar where the industry finally stops leaning on the cross-gen crutch and starts pushing hardware to its absolute limit. Between Rockstar’s inevitable gravity well and Capcom reviving dead samurai franchises, the release schedule looks like a minefield of potential masterpieces and expensive flops. I’ve parsed the hype, filtered the noise, and ranked these projects based on their likely market dominance and cultural footprint.
Rockstar is finally ready to show us where the money went. November 19, 2026, is the date everyone is circling with a mix of excitement and genuine dread for their free time. Expected to push the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S to their absolute breaking point, this is the biggest thing happening in 2026, period. It’s the kind of project that forces every other publisher to move their release dates out of sheer terror. Expect a level of detail that makes current open worlds look like a collection of cardboard boxes. It’s going to be a massive commercial beast, and we’ll see if the writing can still hit that cynical Rockstar sweet spot in today’s world.
Insomniac is carrying the PlayStation brand on its back right now, and this PlayStation 5 exclusive is their most aggressive move yet. We’re expecting a visceral, R-rated Logan that refuses to play nice. If you want a game that feels like a punch to the gut, this is the one. It’s got the high-budget polish and the talent to be the biggest thing outside of the Rockstar orbit. It’s going to sell millions on brand name alone, but the raw grit is what will make it stay on your hard drive. This is easily the silver medalist for 2026 success, catering to everyone who wanted the Spider-Man quality with a lot more blood.
Capcom is calling this one Resident Evil: Requiem, and the word on the street is that it’s the bridge connecting the entire series for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. It’s horror for the masses, polished to a mirror finish. Right next to it, Forza Horizon 6 is finally taking the festival to Japan as a flagship Xbox and PC title. The car culture there is legendary, and if Playground Games nails the neon aesthetic of Tokyo and the rural mountain passes, it’s going to be the visual benchmark for the hardware. These two are the heavy hitters for the mid-year window that will dominate the conversation.
Microsoft needs Fable to be a home run on Xbox and PC. It’s been in the oven forever, and while the pedigree of Playground Games is undeniable, translating that British wit into an RPG is a different beast entirely. It’s a dark horse that could dominate the holiday season if it finds its voice. Then there’s Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, aiming for a cinematic launch on consoles and PC. With Amy Hennig involved, the expectation for a cinematic powerhouse is sky-high. It’s a straightforward action play that will move units on the Marvel name alone, even if it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel.
Remedy doesn’t make games for everyone, and that’s why they’re great. Control: Resonant is headed to PS5, Xbox, and PC for the heads who want their brains scrambled by high-brow weirdness. It’s a specific vibe that won’t hit GTA numbers, but it will be the critical darling of the year. Slay the Spire 2 is the indie king here, likely dominating PC first. It’s pure mechanical perfection that will ruin your sleep schedule. Meanwhile, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is trying to prove Lara Croft still matters across all major platforms. Reimagining the original is a safe move, but it needs to do more than mimic the Uncharted formula to stand out in the 2026 meat grinder.
Capcom is digging into the vault for Onimusha: Way of the Sword for PS5, Xbox, and PC. It’s a nostalgia play that has a dedicated following but might struggle with a younger audience that didn’t grow up with the PS2. Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection is another specific win, likely finding a home on Nintendo’s next hardware and PC. These are solid performers that know their lanes and stay in them, providing that old-school flavor for the players who miss the straightforward brilliance of the early 2000s.
Phantom Blade Zero looks incredible in motion, like a Hong Kong action flick come to life for PS5 and PC. The concern is whether the gameplay holds up under the flash. It’s a new IP from S-Game that could be the breakout hit of the year if the difficulty is tuned right. The Blood of Dawnwalker is the first outing from Rebel Wolves for consoles and PC. It’s got that CD Projekt Red DNA, and RPG fans are starving for something with that kind of depth. It’s a long shot for the top of the charts, but it has the street cred to be a sleeper hit for the hardcore crowd. So lets wayt for Phantom Blade Zero a bit to see.
With the Switch 2 in full swing, Nintendo is dropping Mario Tennis Fever and Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. They’re the reliable revenue earners—low risk, high polish. They won’t set the world on fire with innovation, but they’ll be in every household with kids. There’s also the faint hope for a Super Mario Galaxy 3 announcement to coincide with the movie, though that’s leaning more toward wishful thinking for the Switch 2.
Toshihiro Nagoshi is also stepping out with Gang of Dragon on PS5 and PC. It’s a gritty urban adventure from the man who gave us Yakuza, and while it’s a niche appeal, the quality is usually undeniable for anyone who likes their games with a bit of street-level grime.
Blizzard is trying to keep the lights on with World of Warcraft: Midnight on PC, but the real test is Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred. After the last expansion left a lot of the community feeling cold, this move on consoles and PC is starting to look like a play for a player base that’s already moving on to greener pastures. Then you have the absolute madness of the Half-Life 3 hope. Every year some optimist thinks Valve is finally going to count to three on PC, and 2026 is no different. It’s the ultimate believe-it-when-I-see-it situation, but the cultural weight of that brand is so heavy it can’t be ignored even if it’s probably just another beautiful lie.
The 2026 horror landscape is a chaotic mess of legitimate scares and nostalgia bait. Hellraiser: Revival is bringing body-horror back to consoles and PC, which carries weight if you actually care about visceral aesthetics. The Sinking City 2 is also crawling out of the woodwork on PS5, Xbox, and PC, trying to fix the jank of the first one while leaning into that damp, Lovecraftian misery. Then there is the Fatal Frame: Crimson Butterfly remake for consoles, which is basically the IP holders realizing that we’ll pay for the same trauma twice if the ghosts look high-def enough.
You also have Ghost Master: Resurrection for the strategy nerds and Crisol: Theater of Idols, a PC-focused shooter where your own health is literally the ammo. Poppy Playtime is still kicking around too, proving that the mascot horror trend is far from dead on all platforms.
Mewgenics is finally looking like a real thing on PC, and anyone who knows Edmund McMillen knows that it’s going to be a disgusting, addictive masterpiece. Alongside it, we have Neverway and 1348 Ex Voto representing the smaller, more personal projects that usually end up being the games we’re still talking about five years later. On the fighting front, it’s a weird mix of licenses for all systems. Invincible VS and Avatar Legends are clearly aiming for that specific fan crossover, while Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is trying to carve out its own space in a genre that is notoriously hard to break into. These games won’t be topping the charts, but they provide the texture that keeps the industry from becoming a monotonous loop.
Nintendo is playing the long game with the Switch 2, and their 2026 lineup is a masterclass in emotional manipulation. There’s the faint hope for a Super Mario Galaxy 3 announcement to coincide with the movie, though that’s leaning more toward wishful thinking for the new hardware. On the technical side, everyone is wondering what’s happening with the Max Payne 1 & 2 Remakes. While Remedy is pushing Control: Resonant, the shadow of those noir classics looms large over PS5, Xbox, and PC. If they manage to drop both in the same window, it’ll be a total takeover of the mid-tier market. Meanwhile, Poppy Playtime is still kicking around on all platforms, proving that the mascot horror trend is far from dead for the audience that likes their childhood toys turned into homicidal monsters.
On the fighting front, it’s a weird mix of licenses for all systems that feels like a fever dream for the tournament scene. Invincible VS and Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game are clearly aiming for that specific fan crossover, while Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is trying to carve out its own space in a genre that is notoriously hard to break into. These games won’t be topping the charts or making Rockstar-level money, but they provide the texture that keeps the 2026 calendar from being a monotonous loop of the same three genres. It’s the grit at the bottom of the pan that actually gives the year its flavor, even if most people are too distracted by the shiny stuff at the top to notice the real work being done here
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A preliminary employment tribunal hearing has seen the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) request that a judge grant interim relief to the 31 UK-based GTA 6 developers fired by Rockstar, reportedly following discussion of changes to Rockstar's company Slack policies by staff on Discord. The union, which filed legal claims against the company over the dismissals last year, continue to assert that they were a form of union busting. Rockstar, meanwhile, have released a fresh statement claiming that the root of this is simply stopping info about GTA 6 from leaking.
Over the weekend, Grand Theft Auto 6’s legions of fan weather-watchers spotted a portfolio reel created by former Rockstar animator Benjamin Chue that includes what appears to be some WIP stuff from GTA 6. Assuming the leak is legitimate, this isn’t nearly an eruption on the scale of the 2022 GTA 6 leaks: it contains a couple of extremely non-final animations from the forthcoming open world game.
One is of deuteragonist Lucia Caminos jumping out of a pick-up truck, which seems like a thing she’d do, though official GTA 6 trailers suggest she’d do it with a lot more bum jiggle than this. Another is of a placeholder baldy man – let’s christen him something appropriately generic, like Jean-Luc Picard – undocking a bike from a public bicycle hire station. Yes, GTA 6 has Boris Bikes.
A new report claims the firing of 34 developers by Rockstar Games for alleged "gross misconduct" followed a Discord discussion which cited emails about changes to the company's internal Slack policies. Rockstar have been accused of union busting by the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain over the firings, with the union having filed legal claims against the company.
GTA 6 creators Rockstar have been called out by a member of the UK parliament for dismissing 31 Rockstar North employees in an alleged instance of union-busting. The politician in question, Christine Jardine of Edinburgh West and the Liberal Democrats, says that she has been approached by several of the fired developers, whom Rockstar accuse of leaking confidential information during conversations with union organisers in a private Discord channel.
Speaking during an interview with GI.biz, Hakan Abrak, CEO of 007 First Light developer IO Interactive, has admitted that Spring 2026 is looking very positive now that Grand Theft Auto VI has bee delayed to November, as developers are spared having to go up against the Rockstar Games juggernaut.
“It would be a lie not to say that obviously spring looks really good,” said Abrak. “I want to say in the same breath that GTA 6 is a welcome thing for the industry,” he continues. “I do believe a lot of gamers who maybe haven’t played for a while will get into things again, and generally for the industry as a whole, I think that will be amazing.”
Related Content — Upcoming PS5 Games 2025: The Best PS5 Games Coming Soon
IO Interactive is currently working on its Jame Bond adventure 007 First Light, which is scheduled to launch in March 2026 for PS5, PC, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X/S. The game will tell the origins story of the character as he attempts to earn his license to kill, and therefore the events of 007 First Light depict a much more reckless, younger Bond before he became the womanising, martini-sipping super spy seen in the movies.
[Source – GI.biz]
The post IO Interactive Boss Says ‘Spring Looks Really Good’ Following Grand Theft Auto VI Delay appeared first on PlayStation Universe.
Former Rockstar Games staff were fired last month due to internal company messages being discussed on a Discord server shared privately between staff and union workers, a new report has suggested.
Take-Two Interactive's CEO believes the gaming industry is heading towards PC dominance, despite the company's upcoming publishing juggernaut GTA 6 so far only slated for Xbox and PlayStation.
The UK trade union Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB) has issued a legal claim against Rockstar following what it believes is the unfair dismissal of staff.
After Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption developer Rockstar fired 30-40 employees, the studio was accused of union busting by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain. Rockstar denied the accusations through a spokesperson and maintained that these employees had leaked information on a public forum. The latest chapter of the story saw an anonymous employee of the award-winning game development studio write a lengthy post on GTAForums, the biggest public forum dedicated to the series of best-selling open world videogames. This poster's identity was allegedly verified by a moderator at GTAForums. In the post, this employee claims that […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/anonymous-rockstar-employee-says-there-were-no-leaks-layoffs-union-busting/
Grand Theft Auto VI has been delayed, which means we'll have to keep going back to Grand Theft Auto V to get a fix for Rockstar's best-selling franchise. If you're one of the handful of people who have yet to play one of the highest-selling video games ever, it looks like you'll get another chance, at least on PlayStation. According to Billbil-kun at Dealabs, Grand Theft Auto V is heading back to the PS Plus Extra games catalogue. Billbil-kun and Dealabs have a strong track record when it comes to reporting PS Plus games, whether it's one of, or sometimes […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/grand-theft-auto-v-reportedly-heading-back-to-ps-plus-extra-catalog/
A few hours ago, Rockstar Games announced the second GTA VI delay. Originally slated to launch in Fall 2025, the game was moved to May 26, 2026 on May 2, 2025. However, the studio has now requested more time to polish the game, which will launch on November 19, 2026. The news came just before Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two, announced its Q2 2026 financial results. Predictably, investors questioned Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick on the matter during the earnings call; the executive stated that this new GTA VI delay will allow Rockstar not only to surpass but also to exceed the […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/gta-vi-delay-help-rockstar-exceed-expectations-take-two-ceo-never-regretted-delay/
After it was initially set to launch on May 26, 2026, Rockstar Games has announced that Grand Theft Auto VI will suffer at least one more delay, as the game gets pushed from May 26, 2026, to November 19, 2026. The news was announced in a brief post on X (formerly Twitter) from the official Rockstar Games account. No specific reason is cited for the delay; Rockstar just says that it needed the extra time to hit the level of polish and quality it wants. "Hi everyone," the post begins. "Grand Theft Auto VI will now release on Thursday, November […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/grand-theft-auto-6-delayed-to-november-2026/
Rockstar has announced that Grand Theft Auto 6 has been delayed again, and is now coming out on 19th November 2026.
“We are sorry for adding additional time to what we realize has been a long wait,” the studio writes, “but these extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve.
“We want to thank you again for your patience and support. While the wait is a little longer, we are incredibly excited for players to experience the sprawling state of Leonida and a return to modern day Vice City.”
GTA 6 had previously been set for launch on 26th May 2026, and while this was the first firm date that we had for launch from Take Two and Rockstar, it had come after the better part of a year of Take Two execs assuring that the game was going to launch in 2025.
The studio has, quite awkwardly, been grabbing headlines for what has been lambasted as “brazen” union busting by leaders of the IWGB union who has been helping to coordinate unionisation efforts among employees. 30-40 employees were let go last week, which Rockstar has claimed was for disclosing confidential details in a public forum, though this is disputed by the IWGB. This will no doubt rumble on for a while to come.
The last we saw of GTA 6 came in May with the release of the game’s second trailer:
Grand Theft Auto VI will take us all back to Vice City for Rockstar’s latest crime story, featuring Lucia, the series’ first female protagonist, who’s coming fresh out of prison, and Jason, who works with the local drugrunners after quitting the army.
The trailers have shown off the modern day setting in the fictionalised state of Leonida, with a handful of things like social media influence and excesses feeding into the atmosphere, though that won’t stop there being plenty of iconic classic cars and inspirations from the breadth of American culture in the South East of the country and Florida in particular. From packed beaches to going across the swamps on hover craft, and partying at the tops of skyscrapers, there’s also jokes thrown into the trailer about battling crocodiles in back garden swimming pools, “Floridaman” antics – Leonidaman in the game – and plenty more.
Source: Rockstar
Rockstar Games announced yet another Grand Theft Auto VI delay following the developer firing about 30-40 people and Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain accusing the GTA VI studio of union-busting. (The studio told Bloomberg that the employees’ “gross misconduct” was the cause and not anything related to a union.) The new GTA VI release date is now November 19, 2026, rather than May 26, 2026.
The official statement regarding the GTA VI delay ended up being quite short, and it didn’t mention the dismissals or possible union issues. It only announced we will need to wait six months more than expected, then stated that time will be put toward ensuring the quality of the final product is what we expect from the open-world game. It also apologized for this most recent rescheduling and thanked people for their support so far.
Here’s the full announcement:
“Grand Theft Auto VI will now release on Thursday, November 19, 2026.
“We are sorry for adding additional time to what we realize 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.
“We want to thank you again for your patience and support. While the wait is a little longer, we are incredibly excited for players to experience the sprawling state of Leonida and a return to modern day Vice City.”
The last announcement regarding the game came up back in May 2025. That included the May 2025 GTA VI release date, which itself was a delay from the original Fall 2025 launch window. That also included a new trailer.
The Grand Theft Auto VI release date is November 19, 2026, and we will see it on consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X.
The post There’s Another GTA VI Delay After Rockstar Firings and Union-Busting Allegations appeared first on Siliconera.
Hi everyone, GTA 6 has been delayed again. It's now set to arrive on November 19th, 2026, about half a year on from the May 26th date it'd landed on following its last delay. November 19th, 2026 will apparently be a Thursday, just in case you were wondering.
