New Rockstar Projects Won't Launch Before April 2017

Then again, this shouldn't be too surprising, since Rockstar has a tendency to cook its meals for a good long time — just look at how GTA V was delayed. Not too long ago, in an earnings call to investors, Take-Two Interactive representatives confirmed that Rockstar Games is indeed working on new projects, most likely meaning new games.

This immediately kicked off a massive avalanche of speculation going around both the press and the fans. What will their next game be? When will it be announced? When will it be launched? How many projects are they working on? Is GTA 5 story DLC one of those projects?

Well, in order: We don't know, most likely at E3, not sooner than the next financial year, we don't know that either and unlikely.

It was in the same call to investors that a small but more than significant tidbit of info was also dropped: All of the products Take-Two plans on launching in this financial year have already been announced. Financial years, like academic years, do not line up with calendar years (screw whoever came up with this), meaning that "this" financial year won't end until April 2017.

While immediately kicking off financial years with new releases isn't unheard of, it is atypical (Incidentally, GTA 5 on PC launched in April). As far as we know based on previous comments from Take-Two, Rockstar will be showing off something major at E3 this year. Now, the truly high-profile AAA releases are usually announced well over a year before release, not accounting for any potential delays — which are increasingly common.

Whatever it is that Rockstar will show off at E3 probably won't be released anytime soon after April 2017 either — but most definitely not before. If the recent semi-official-semi-rumor info that GTA 6 has indeed recently entered development is true, the development cycle for games of this (presumed) scale is really long.

Depending on whether "entered development" means that it just got greenlit or that actual work has already begun places possible release about 4-5 years from now, including an error margin for delays. Even if this is true, it is doubtful that Rockstar would reveal a project so early on.

This means that whatever they're showing off at E3 is not GTA 6, nor will it be released before the summer of next year. Now, a popular fan theory is that one of the things the devs will show off is long-requested story DLC for Grand Theft Auto 5.

This again, is unlikely — unless they putting together the biggest DLC campaign the franchise has seen, or have a small team working on it because most employees are off building a different project. If enough of it is finished to properly announce, then it would be complete long before April 2017.

At first glance, the info that "there won't be any new Rockstar games before next April" doesn't reveal much, however if you dig deep enough, such info can reveal quite a bit more about the big picture.

Piecing together info from other sources also allows us to add to this analysis. A different Take-Two statement sometime ago was related to the number of IPs registered under the company being too high. This means that it is unlikely for Rockstar to be developing anything which isn't related to an established franchise. Some time ago, the company did file a trademark on the name "Judas", however this is likely in some way related to existing IP.

Summing up what we know so far: