Take-Two Boss Strauss Zelnick Doesn’t Regret GTA 6’s Delay, Calls Out a “High-Profile” Game That Had to Be Pulled After Launch
Grand Theft Auto 6 has been delayed twice and cost Take-Two Interactive a small fortune to make, but chief executive Strauss Zelnick still isn’t second-guessing either call. In a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, Zelnick walked through the thinking behind the delay, the game’s ballooning budget, and why he is still willing to let a release date slip rather than ship something unfinished.
A Mission That Comes at a Price
Asked about the game’s development costs, which have fueled years of speculation and were never far off a billion dollars by most outside estimates, Zelnick didn’t dodge the subject of money. He confirmed the project ran long and expensive, tying that cost directly to Take-Two’s stated mission to make, in his words, the best entertainment on Earth.
“It was expensive and it took a long time.”
Strauss Zelnick, to The Wall Street Journal, on GTA 6’s development
Zelnick framed that spending as part of a broader strategy built around creativity, innovation and efficiency, adding that Take-Two’s balance sheet is built to support expensive swings precisely because, when the studio gets it right, the payoff covers the cost and then some. He was also careful not to declare victory before the game is even out, saying arrogance is the enemy of continued success and that he would rather wait and see how players actually respond on November 19.
Protagonists Jason and Lucia, whose story Take-Two says it was willing to delay rather than rush out the door unfinished.
Learning From Those Who Didn’t Delay
Zelnick also used the interview to explain why Take-Two was willing to absorb the cost of pushing GTA 6’s release back rather than holding to a fixed date. He described it as a test of a company’s actual character versus its mission statement, noting that plenty of studios say the right things about quality until a deadline forces a decision. Without naming names, he pointed to one recent example in the industry of a major release that stuck to its schedule, launched in a state that didn’t work, and had to be pulled from sale afterward to be fixed.
Zelnick didn’t identify the game in question, and Take-Two has never named a specific competitor in these comparisons. GameSpot, which also covered the interview, floated CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 as a likely candidate given its infamous 2020 launch, when the game was pulled from the PlayStation Store entirely and triggered a wave of refunds before years of patches and the Phantom Liberty expansion eventually turned it around. That reading lines up with the timeline Zelnick gave, but it remains the press’s own interpretation rather than something he confirmed outright.
GTA 6’s Expensive Road to November 19
Grand Theft Auto 6 was originally expected in 2025 before Rockstar pushed it first to May 2026 and then to its current November 19 date, a combined delay Zelnick has estimated at around 18 months from the earliest internal targets. Take-Two has consistently framed both moves the same way the WSJ interview does: as expensive, inconvenient and occasionally painful decisions that the company says it has never regretted once the finished game shipped. With the release now weeks away, Rockstar has kept up a steady drip of marketing, including a fresh 39-screenshot launch gallery published just a day before Zelnick’s comments went live.
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Picture Source: Rockstar Games
