GTA 6 won’t be at Summer Game Fest 2022 – and we’re not surprised

Sorry folks, GTA 6 won’t be making an appearance at Summer Game Fest, host Geoff Keighley has confirmed.

The blow to GTA 6 hopefuls comes after Keighley posted an image (opens in new tab) on Twitter showing some of the social media platform’s most popular search terms around ‘#SummerGameFest’. Alongside simply ‘#SummerGameFest’, the two other most popular terms were ‘#SummerGameFest leak’ and ‘#SummerGameFest gta’.

The ‘leak’ term is likely being utilized by Twitter users to search for the abundance of leaks that have already come out ahead of the show, including images and videos of unconfirmed Street Fighter 6 characters and rumors that Kojima is working on a new horror game called Overdose. But the ‘gta’ hashtag seems to indicate that Grand Theft Auto fans are hungry for more details on the highly-anticipated crime ’em up sequel. 

Unfortunately, for eager fans, Geoff Keighley confirmed in his tweet that a GTA 6 trailer won’t be revealed at the Summer Game Fest showcase on June 9.

Wishful thinking

News that Grand Theft Auto 6 won’t be making an appearance at the Summer Game Fest showcase isn’t really a surprise. While fans are hungry for more details on the next Grand Theft Auto following its official announcement in February earlier this year, it’s worth tempering our expectations on exactly when we’ll find out more  – and we could be waiting some time.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: it’s likely we won’t get our hands on GTA 6 until sometime between 2024 and 2025. Rockstar Games may not have confirmed a release date or window, but as reported back in May 2020, parent company Take-Two Interactive’s financial earnings report (opens in new tab) from that year shows that the company expects to spend $89 million on marketing between April 2023 and the end of March 2024 – that’s a huge spike. As the report points out, it’s more than half the marketing budget expected for any other fiscal year over the next decade, indicating we could we GTA 6 release in that period.

Earlier this year, when Take-Two Interactive detailed its planned acquisition of mobile game company Zynga, it shared a note stating that “the combined company is expected to deliver a 14% compound annual growth rate… over the three-year period from Take-Two’s Fiscal Years 2021 through 2024″. Analysts thought that could indicate Rockstar is gearing up to release a major IP.

But, as we know, the only thing that is constant is change, and a lot can change between now and 2024. The abundance of game delays we’ve seen over the past year is evidence of that. 

That’s why we’re more inclined to believe leaker Tom Henderson’s predicted (opens in new tab) 2024/2025 release window (which has been corroborated (opens in new tab) by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier). But, even then, we could see delays in the future. Essentially, we won’t be getting our hands on GTA 6 for a while.

So, based on the predicted release window, when could we find out more details? Well, if a 2024 release window is on the cards then we expect Rockstar Games will start sharing information next year, but we don’t expect a reveal as big as GTA 6 to be sandwiched between other announcements at something like Summer Game Fest. No, while Rockstar Games’ GTA 6 announcement was more of a whimper than a bang, we imagine the developer will host its own showcase or announcement for Grand Theft Auto 6 when it’s ready.

Based on previous announcements, we imagine the developer may simply tease a reveal and then drop a trailer that breaks the internet. 

Either way, don’t expect GTA 6 news anytime soon and certainly don’t expect it at Summer Game Fest.