GTA 6 Delay Wasn’t Bad News for Everyone — Ghost of Yotei Dev Jokes It Sparked a Studio-Wide Celebration It’s Still Recovering From
Sucker Punch director Nate Fox has revealed that the day Rockstar confirmed GTA 6 was delayed until 2026 was a “great” one for the Ghost of Yotei team.
Grand Theft Auto 6 was due out in fall 2025, but over the summer, Rockstar confirmed a delay to May 26, 2026, saying it needed “this extra time to deliver at the level of quality [players] expect and deserve.” And while the delay may have been disappointing news for players desperate to experience a new GTA game, Sucker Punch was delighted that Rockstar’s upcoming game would no longer clash with the October release of Ghost of Yotei.
In an interview with MinnMax (thanks, GR+), co-creative director Fox said the news resulted in a celebration, joking: “We’re all still hungover, multi-month hangover. That was a great day.”
Much like how the shadow-dropped announcement of Hollow Knight: Silksong’s release date of September 4, 2025, was a less-than-celebratory day for the developers of around 10 other video games with existing marketing plans to launch around that same time, studios have also been shuffling release schedules to ensure their titles don’t bump up against GTA 6 and soak up the time, money, and interest of potential players.
As we summarized at the time, Hollow Knight: Silksong’s debut affected the release of games like Demonschool, Aeterna Lucis, Little Witch in the Woods, CloverPit, Megabonk, Baby Steps, Faeland, Starbirds, and Moros Protocol. Even Stomp and the Sword of Miracles, an indie game with no release date plans anywhere in sight, elected to delay its Kickstarter launch and demo release due to Silksong.
Couple that uncertainty with Hollow Knight: Silksong crashing Steam, the Nintendo eShop, and the digital stores on Xbox and PlayStation, we wonder how GTA 6 will impact the wider industry, too.
Nigel Lowrie, co-founder of Devolver Digital, told IGN: “There are AAA games and then there’s AAAA games and I’d argue that Grand Theft Auto is potentially the AAAAA game, it’s just bigger than anything else both in the scope and scale of the game and the kind of cultural impact that it has and the attention it demands.”
Adam Lieb, CEO of marketing platform Gamesight, added: “I would say that GTA for the last year and a half has been a part of almost every conversation around launch dates I have heard.”
At least Ghost of Yotei’s release date seems certain: October 2, 2025. The follow-up to Ghost of Tsushima, Yotei is set in the lands surrounding Mount Yotei, and takes place more than 300 years after the events of the first game.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
