When will GTA 6 hit PC? Letās look at Rockstarās release history
Grand Theft Auto VI will be, barring some sort of disaster, the biggest piece of media released in 2026. Doctor Doom, eat your cold, stony little heart out.
Itās practically guaranteed to be the largest game launch in years, possibly everā¦despite being limited to an Xbox and PlayStation debut. The game is inevitably coming to PC later ā like its fictional criminal heroes, Rockstarās not going to leave that kind of money on the table. But how long will it take? Thatās the question Iām pondering in this weekās newsletter.
Welcome to the Boost Mode newsletter. Every week I share my insights on PC gaming, desktop setups, and hardware optimization. I also track down some of the most interesting PC and nerd news from around the web, plus a PC game pick you might not have seen elsewhere. Want this newsletter to come directly to your inbox? Sign up on our website!Ā
A delayed PC release is pretty normal for this series. Naturally, neither developer Rockstar nor publisher Take-Two are talking. (Again, very similar to those bad guys you play as in GTA!) But we can use the companyās history of console-first releases and PC follow-ups, as well as a bit of industry scuttlebutt, to make a pretty good guess as to when GTA VI will arrive on your gaming PC.
A history of delayed PC releases
For the most relevant, empirical data, letās take a look at the last 15 years of game releases from Rockstar. Specifically Rockstar North, the studio team within the company most directly responsible for shepherding the GTA franchise.
- Red Dead Redemption 2 ā Console release October 2018, PC release November 2019. Gap: 1 year, 1 month
- Grand Theft Auto V ā Console release September 2013, PC release April 2015. Gap: 1 year, 7 months
- L.A. Noire ā Console release May 2011, PC release November 2011. Gap: 6 months
Max Payne 3 was released at the same time on consoles and PC in May 2012, but Iām counting that as something of an aberration, since Max Payne began as a PC franchise and it was developed as a more collaborative effort between multiple Rockstar teams.
We could go further back for more data, but I think weād be losing a lot of relevance to the modern gaming landscape by looking at games as old as GTA IV in 2008 (1.5-year gap) and the original Red Dead Redemption (a full 14 years between the PS3/Xbox 360 release and the PC port, from a third-party team).
Based on those admittedly scattershot numbers, I would guess somewhere between one and two years between GTA VIās November 19th, 2026 release on the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S and a PC version. So, late 2027 to late 2028. But there are many more factors at play here.
Reasons for a later release
To paraphrase a modern master, āGTA VI is big. Really big. You just wonāt believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think itās a long way down the road to the Ammu-Nation, but thatās just peanuts to GTA VI.ā
Rockstar
Rockstar has been working on this game for over a decade. The total budget is estimated to surpass a billion US dollars. There are reportedly 7,500 people working on it across 11 different studios all over the world. (Minus thirty or so, possibly illegally fired for whispering about unions, which Rockstar views as a 6-star criminal offense.)
The graphics tech, the internal systems, the complexity of the game engine, and the sheer size and scope of the game are set to leave more recent open-world titles in the dust. It is probably going to be, without hyperbole, the most complex modern video game ever.
Rockstar
Complexity means that the work wonāt stop in November when the game releases. Hundreds, possibly thousands of developers will keep working on the game, updating and fixing a myriad of bugs even as millions of people play it. Of course, hundreds, possibly thousands of developers may also be furloughed or laid off, as Take-Two finds them surplus to requirements after spending years on the biggest video game release in history. Working in the AAA video game industry is, if I havenāt made this clear yet, kind of a nightmare these days. I can sympathize.
But yeah, with GTA VI increasing in complexity by an order of magnitude over Rockstarās last open-world release RDR2, itās reasonable to suspect that it might take longer than usual for the game to make the leap from console to PC. Exactly how long will probably depend on how solid the game is upon release.
Reasons for a sooner release
Video games, even games released on consoles and phones and YouTube, etc., are developed on PCs. And these days, theyāre made to be cross-platform from the ground up. Even if Rockstar wants to wait a year or more to release GTA VI for Windows, itās planning for that eventuality right now.
The engine that Rockstar is using is called RAGE, the
Grand Theft Auto VI will be, barring some sort of disaster, the biggest piece of media released in 2026. Doctor Doom, eat your cold, stony little heart out.
Itās practically guaranteed to be the largest game launch in years, possibly everā¦despite being limited to an Xbox and PlayStation debut. The game is inevitably coming to PC later ā like its fictional criminal heroes, Rockstarās not going to leave that kind of money on the table. But how long will it take? Thatās the question Iām pondering in this weekās newsletter.
Welcome to the Boost Mode newsletter. Every week I share my insights on PC gaming, desktop setups, and hardware optimization. I also track down some of the most interesting PC and nerd news from around the web, plus a PC game pick you might not have seen elsewhere. Want this newsletter to come directly to your inbox? Sign up on our website!Ā
A delayed PC release is pretty normal for this series. Naturally, neither developer Rockstar nor publisher Take-Two are talking. (Again, very similar to those bad guys you play as in GTA!) But we can use the companyās history of console-first releases and PC follow-ups, as well as a bit of industry scuttlebutt, to make a pretty good guess as to when GTA VI will arrive on your gaming PC.
A history of delayed PC releases
For the most relevant, empirical data, letās take a look at the last 15 years of game releases from Rockstar. Specifically Rockstar North, the studio team within the company most directly responsible for shepherding the GTA franchise.
- Red Dead Redemption 2 ā Console release October 2018, PC release November 2019. Gap: 1 year, 1 month
- Grand Theft Auto V ā Console release September 2013, PC release April 2015. Gap: 1 year, 7 months
- L.A. Noire ā Console release May 2011, PC release November 2011. Gap: 6 months
Max Payne 3 was released at the same time on consoles and PC in May 2012, but Iām counting that as something of an aberration, since Max Payne began as a PC franchise and it was developed as a more collaborative effort between multiple Rockstar teams.
We could go further back for more data, but I think weād be losing a lot of relevance to the modern gaming landscape by looking at games as old as GTA IV in 2008 (1.5-year gap) and the original Red Dead Redemption (a full 14 years between the PS3/Xbox 360 release and the PC port, from a third-party team).
Based on those admittedly scattershot numbers, I would guess somewhere between one and two years between GTA VIās November 19th, 2026 release on the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S and a PC version. So, late 2027 to late 2028. But there are many more factors at play here.
Reasons for a later release
To paraphrase a modern master, āGTA VI is big. Really big. You just wonāt believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think itās a long way down the road to the Ammu-Nation, but thatās just peanuts to GTA VI.ā
Rockstar
Rockstar has been working on this game for over a decade. The total budget is estimated to surpass a billion US dollars. There are reportedly 7,500 people working on it across 11 different studios all over the world. (Minus thirty or so, possibly illegally fired for whispering about unions, which Rockstar views as a 6-star criminal offense.)
The graphics tech, the internal systems, the complexity of the game engine, and the sheer size and scope of the game are set to leave more recent open-world titles in the dust. It is probably going to be, without hyperbole, the most complex modern video game ever.
Rockstar
Complexity means that the work wonāt stop in November when the game releases. Hundreds, possibly thousands of developers will keep working on the game, updating and fixing a myriad of bugs even as millions of people play it. Of course, hundreds, possibly thousands of developers may also be furloughed or laid off, as Take-Two finds them surplus to requirements after spending years on the biggest video game release in history. Working in the AAA video game industry is, if I havenāt made this clear yet, kind of a nightmare these days. I can sympathize.
But yeah, with GTA VI increasing in complexity by an order of magnitude over Rockstarās last open-world release RDR2, itās reasonable to suspect that it might take longer than usual for the game to make the leap from console to PC. Exactly how long will probably depend on how solid the game is upon release.
Reasons for a sooner release
Video games, even games released on consoles and phones and YouTube, etc., are developed on PCs. And these days, theyāre made to be cross-platform from the ground up. Even if Rockstar wants to wait a year or more to release GTA VI for Windows, itās planning for that eventuality right now.
The engine that Rockstar is using is called RAGE, the