GTA 6 两次跳票始于电话，Take-Two CEO 难信第二次延期

Rockstar’s Jennifer Kolbe phoned Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick twice to delay GTA 6. His reaction to the second call has now been revealed.

Rockstar’s head of publishing rang Take-Two’s chief executive twice to push Grand Theft Auto 6 back, and on the second call he asked her to tell him she was joking.

Jennifer Kolbe, head of publishing at Rockstar, recounted the calls in an interview that the studio’s leadership gave this week. After developers told her the game needed more time, she phoned Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick to request the first delay, moving Grand Theft Auto 6 from autumn 2025 to May 2026. Months later she called again to ask for more time, and the release moved to 19 November 2026.

“Please tell me you’re kidding”

Of that second call, Kolbe said: “I think he said, ‘You’re kidding. Please tell me you’re kidding’.” Once Rockstar had explained its reasons, she said, he accepted the new date. She added that Rockstar is lucky Zelnick is as reasonable as he is, because a lot of executives would say “you just better figure out how to ship it”, and that this happens to a lot of teams. Zelnick himself told the interview that giving a game extra time is usually a wise investment if it lets it reach the quality it is capable of.

Rockstar’s leadership said there was no single crisis behind the delays, just an enormous number of moving parts that did not come together as quickly as they had hoped. Head of development Phil Hooker said the team could have hit the schedule, but it would not have been the game they wanted. Rockstar’s leaders genuinely believed a 2025 launch was possible, though some developers below them were not convinced.

Why the game needed the time

The same interview explains where the time went. Grand Theft Auto 6 began as Project Americas, a plan to cover large areas of both North and South America, which Rockstar scaled back to Miami and its surroundings after Red Dead Redemption 2 consumed the studio’s resources. The studio also built a new Los Angeles office of writers, producers and directors dedicated entirely to non-player characters, after realising it lacked the capacity for the number it needed.

Kolbe also dismissed the rumour that the game cost more than the roughly $1.5 billion spent on the Burj Khalifa, though she did not give a figure, and the studio has not confirmed its budget.

Grand Theft Auto 6 launches on 19 November 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.