When Rockstar’s head of publishing, Jennifer Kolbe, called Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick to tell him GTA 6 needed a second delay, his first reaction was to ask whether she was serious. Kolbe recalled the moment in a new Bloomberg feature by Jason Schreier. It’s the first time Rockstar has spoken openly about why the game slipped twice, and the answer is less dramatic than you might expect.
There was no single crisis, according to the studio’s leadership. Just an enormous number of moving parts that didn’t come together as quickly as they’d hoped. For a game this size, that’s hardly a shock, but it’s a far more honest answer than the usual “we wanted to give it a little extra polish.”
Rockstar Really Did Believe in 2025
Let’s rewind to December 4, 2023, when the first GTA 6 trailer finally dropped. It racked up 93 million views in just 24 hours, smashing the YouTube record for a non-music video, and it has since climbed to almost 300 million. I remember the internet collectively losing its mind that day, and with good reason. It also came with a promise: GTA 6 would be out in 2025.
According to Rockstar’s...
