Why GTA 5 Will Most Likely Not Release This Year

I already wrote about why we can expect GTA 5 to release this year, now I’ll focus on why it won’t most likely come this year. The rumor mill on the internet went massively mad when the earning calls of Take-Two ended with analysts predicting that the game will be released to meet the revenue expectations for this fiscal year.

But some people is taking all the earning calls thing a little more serious than others. People at the GameMarshal have done some extensive research and now claim that GTA 5 will indeed launch this year. They have even gone as far as pin pointing the exact date of the release.

GameMarshal gives evidence to back their claim. They studied the release pattern of the previous GTA games and came up with a conclusion that the game will be released somewhere between October and November.

According to GameMarshal, GTA III was released 344 days after the release of its predecessor, while GTA: Vice City took 138 days. GTA: San Andreas was released 244 days after its release. Based on the release schedule of Take-Two, the folks there believe that during the months of October and November, 343 days will be past since the last GTA game.

While the research and conclusion sounds convincing, to me it’s not. First of all, Rocksteady has confirmed that GTA 5 is going to be one of the biggest entries into the series. With a big game coming, surely the developers require extra time building it. And provided that GTA 5 is being produced with enhanced visuals and a lot of new features, more time will be needed.

So there is actually a high chance that GTA 5 will take more time to be developed compared to all its predecessors. Sometimes developers just take longer to produce a sequel. Even if Rocksteady tries to aim the release date in November, it would mean that we would get an incomplete game.

Fans of the GTA series will most likely prefer to wait for a complete game than getting their hands on an unfinished game. We have already seen how the unfinished version of Max Payne 3 really destroyed fun for the PC gamers. The game suffered major technical issues which are still being fixed by the support team even two months after its release.

Take-Two is definitely going to push and try to release the game as early as possible to save themselves the wrath of investors. But is it really a good decision to release the game early, even when it is unfinished? I think not and for that matter the publisher is not going to risk losing customer base with its biggest franchise on hand.