Grand Theft Auto 6 could be out in 2023, according to Take-Two SEC filing

Grand Theft Auto. It’s a small, indie game that hasn’t really spread very far beyond the miniscule audience that plays it religiously. You haven’t even heard of GTA, right? Too busy with Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed to throw money at a tiny development team just looking for a breakout hit. Shame on you.

Well, not that you’d even care, but rumours have been rumbling amongst industry analysts that Grand Theft Auto 6 might be released in 2023. Their predictions are a bit of an estimated guess, so bear that in mind, but looking at a form filed by publisher Take-Two Interactive with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, they’re spending a lot of money that year.

The Form 10-K, which basically requires companies to outline their annual minimum contractual obligations and commitments for marketing, indicates that Take-Two will be setting aside $89 million for marketing alone. That’s a lot of cash to spend purely on getting the word out, especially when you consider the fact that the number is nine times higher than the registered amount for 2021. This has prompted industry analyst Jeff Cohen to speculate that the spike in budget indicates that GTA 6 could be released in 2023.

“We are not sure how much we should be reading into this shift, but we would note that this disclosure accurately predicted the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2 prior to that game’s announcement,” Cohen said in a note to investors. Which, when you put it that way, gives this hypothesis some legs.

Better to take it all with a grain of salt but if history is one to repeat itself, that means that GTA 6 is only three years away. Which makes sense, given that they’ll want to launch on consoles that have already been established and tested properly by both users and developers. Not that you care about all this. You’ve never even heard of Grand Theft Auto, have you?