When the release of GTA VI was postponed from 2025 to 2026, the analytics company Ampere Analysis estimated that just because of this decision, the console market value in 2025 could be about 2.7 billion USD lower than forecasted. With the autumn release window freed up, other game publishers rushed to fill it.
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These figures explain why Rockstar Games can afford what would be very painful for many other companies – to postpone the release of one of the most anticipated games in the world once again.
According to Povilas Katkevičius, a game developer at the Lithuanian studio Nordcurrent, the biggest risk in this case may not be the additional years of development, but a product reaching the market too early.
“Releasing an unfinished big game and pretending it’s finished can cost much more than developing it for another year,” he says.
When the whole market fears one game
The true scale of GTA VI is best seen not in the game itself, but around it.
Big game publishers plan their release dates taking competitors into account. But the GTA case is exceptional. Few want to release an expensive game at the same time when one huge competitor will take the attention, time, and money of millions of players.
That is why the postponements of GTA VI free up windows in the market for other publishers, and analysts recalculate the forecasts for the entire console market.
“The scarier thing is that when GTA VI comes out, a sixth of the world will take vacations and the economy will pause, but the food delivery business will thrive very successfully,” P. Katkevičius humorously comments on the situation.
The gaming industry competes not only among itself but also for consumers’ time and entertainment money with cinema, series, and social networks. Few cultural products can gather such an audience at once as GTA can.
A billion dollars in three days
Why Rockstar has so much to lose is shown by the history of the previous GTA. GTA V, released in 2013, generated more than 800 million USD in retail revenue in its first day and crossed the billion-dollar mark in just three days. At that time, it was the fastest entertainment product to reach a billion dollars.
More than a decade later, GTA V remains one of the best-selling games in history. Therefore, its successor is viewed not as an ordinary new product but as one of the biggest upcoming events in the entire entertainment market.
It is often repeated publicly that the development and marketing of GTA VI may cost about 2 billion USD. If this estimate is accurate, it would be one of the most expensive entertainment products ever created – its expenses would exceed even the approximately 1.5 billion USD cost of building the Burj Khalifa. However, Rockstar Games has not officially announced the GTA VI budget.
But even without knowing the exact amount, one thing is clear: when investments are this large, the cost of mistakes also becomes enormous.
The first impression can only be sold once
Just a few decades ago, technical problems with a game primarily became a problem for those who had already bought it. Today, a failed launch becomes content on YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, and other platforms within hours.
A player doesn’t even need to buy the game to see its flaws.
That is why release day has become not only a technological but also a financial event.
“You can only release and gather positive first impressions once. It can be very difficult to recover from a negative first impression,” says the Nordcurrent representative.
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According to him, there have been exceptions in the industry. Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man’s Sky managed to significantly change players’ opinions after problematic launches. But that required additional years of work, investment, and patience. Many other projects do not get such a second chance.
“People’s expectations for this type of game are very high and all mistakes are very public. The cost of quickly spreading errors can hurt badly as sales decline, and when development costs need to be recouped, it can end catastrophically,” the interviewee says.
Therefore, according to P. Katkevičius, although expensive, a delay can act as insurance for the investment.
Technology has not made games cheaper
Computers have become more powerful, game development tools better, automation and artificial intelligence have appeared. It would seem that games should be able to be created faster and cheaper because of this, but the budgets and development times of the biggest projects are moving in the opposite direction.
According to the Nordcurrent game developer, the time saved by technology is used for even greater ambition.
“If we can do something faster, we do more. If our current computers support better graphics, we make everything more realistic. Every victory we gain thanks to technological progress, we simply convert into a bigger challenge,” says P. Katkevičius.
This also explains the development time of GTA VI. The bigger the project, the more content, people, coordination, and quality control are needed. Although AI is expected to speed up game development, introducing new tools halfway through such a large-scale project would not necessarily save time.
“Most of GTA VI was built without using these tools, and now integrating AI tools into an already ongoing process is too risky and expensive. This game is not even released yet and is already an absolute cultural phenomenon, with all spotlights aimed at it. Such a level of attention raises the bar for absolutely all game development departments,” says the Nordcurrent representative.
Lithuanian developers don’t need to chase GTA
The scale of GTA VI does not mean that the entire gaming industry now has to try to reach the same technological bar. For smaller studios, including Lithuanian developers, the competitive advantage lies elsewhere.
“Basically, GTA VI changes nothing. Small studios work faster, more creatively, and can quickly adapt to even very big changes in the project vision; such flexibility provides an advantage,” says P. Katkevičius.
As big game budgets grow, a paradoxical situation arises: the more money invested in a project, the less its developer can afford to take risks.
A game costing hundreds of millions must appeal to a huge audience. A smaller project can afford a stranger idea, unusual mechanics, or visual style. Small studios can also react faster to player feedback and use the early access model, where the product is developed together with the community.
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