After more than a decade, Rockstar Games will finally deliver a sequel to Grand Theft Auto 5, the multi-generational open-world crime spree that has sold more than 190 million copies. On Dec. 4, GTA fans got their first official look at Grand Theft Auto 6 in a trailer that arrived a day early, thanks to a leak of gameplay footage.
We already knew some details about GTA 6, after an unprecedented leak of the game in 2022, but the game’s first trailer blew the lid off. It’s full of street-level chaos, including illegal street races, convenience store robberies, gator wrangling, and general Floridian weirdness. The trailer also shows its dual protagonists getting up to all sorts of low-level crime.
Here’s everything we do know about Grand Theft Auto 6 so far.
When does GTA 6 come out?
Rockstar hasn’t announced a release date yet for GTA 6, but it did provide a release window: 2025.
While GTA 6 may be targeting a 2025 launch, Rockstar is famous for delaying its biggest games in the name of polish. Its last major release, Red Dead Redemption 2, was publicly delayed three times. And back in 2013, Grand Theft Auto 5 saw a significant delay, slipping from its original spring release date to its ultimate September 2013 launch.
In other words, even if Rockstar gives us a release date or window by the end of 2023, history tells us that nothing is set in stone.
When does the GTA 6 trailer come out?
Rockstar released the first Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer on Monday, Dec. 4. It originally planned to show it on Tuesday, but in response to a leak, Rockstar released it early.
Where does GTA 6 take place?
Grand Theft Auto 6 will be set in Vice City, the GTA version of Miami. That location was previously explored in 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and that game’s 2006 prequel Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. Those entries were set during the mid-1980s, but GTA 6 will reportedly tell a modern-day, Bonnie and Clyde-inspired story featuring two leads named Jason and Lucia, based on early gameplay videos. Lucia would be the GTA series’ first female lead playable protagonist in a mainline game.
Wait, what GTA 6 leak?
In 2022, more than 90 videos of the in-development version of Grand Theft Auto 6 were published online at the message board GTAForums. The hacker responsible claimed to have accessed the videos — some 50 minutes in total footage — directly from Rockstar Games’ internal Slack.
The videos show robberies, gunplay, open-world driving, a police chase, a crowded nightclub scene, and conversations with full voice acting. The game footage was clearly not intended to be shown publicly, with debug programming elements visible on-screen at the time.
One of the longer videos showed the female player character robbing a diner, as well as threatening staff and customers, who react in fear to having a gun pulled on them. Then she and her male accomplice get in a shootout with police before jumping in the police patrol car and driving off. The game’s graphical treatment is quite realistic, but still consistent with GTA games’ style.
How long has GTA 6 been in development?
Reportedly since 2014, though Rockstar did not officially acknowledge the game’s existence until February 2022.
What platforms will GTA 6 be released on?
GTA publisher Take-Two Interactive announced that Grand Theft Auto 6 will come to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in 2025. A PC version has not been announced. That’s not uncommon for Grand Theft Auto games, though; the series has had staggered releases on consoles and PC, and the lack of an announced PC version certainly doesn’t rule one out at this point.
There’s another potential platform coming that could be home to Grand Theft Auto 6: Nintendo’s Switch successor. Rockstar has embraced the Switch with releases like L.A. Noire, Red Dead Redemption, and Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition, so don’t rule out an eventual release of GTA 6 on Switch 2.
How much will GTA 6 cost?
Rockstar and publisher Take-Two haven’t announced a price point, but it seems likely that Grand Theft Auto 6 will carry a $69.99 price point, increasingly the standard for AAA video games with big budgets.
Don’t worry about those unfounded rumors that GTA 6 will cost $150, or will be priced per hour, based on misinterpreted comments from Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick. There may be higher-priced premium or collector’s edition versions of GTA 6 that cost more than the industry-standard $69.99, but hold your horses (and your pre-orders) until Rockstar makes it official.
What happens to Grand Theft Auto Online when GTA 6 comes out?
Rockstar hasn’t said, but given the massive popularity of GTA Online, which is also sold as a stand-alone experience, it will likely continue. Rockstar may have more grand ambitions for an online mode for GTA 6, and it may run two versions of the online experience for each game. The future of GTA Online is one of the biggest open questions — not to mention Rockstar’s trickiest needle to thread — when it comes to discussing GTA 6. Rockstar may very well keep those plans under wraps for the foreseeable future.
