GTA 6 Pre-Orders Open June 25, but Rockstar Still Won't Name a Price
Rockstar will open Grand Theft Auto VI pre-orders on June 25 and reveal its cover art, holding the November 19 release date, while leaving the game's price unannounced.
Rockstar Games has finally put a date on the part of Grand Theft Auto VI that costs money. Pre-orders for the most anticipated video game in years open on June 25, the studio's parent company confirmed Thursday, with the game still set to land on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S on November 19. There is one number conspicuously missing from the announcement: the price.
Pre-orders will go live across digital storefronts, including the PlayStation Store and Xbox Store, and at select physical retailers. Rockstar paired the news with the reveal of the games official cover art, the usual collage of stylised characters, weapons, vehicles and animals set in a sun-bleached Vice City. There was no fresh trailer, though one before pre-orders open would surprise no one.
For a franchise this size, the timing is the real signal. Rockstar and parent Take-Two Interactive had said for months they would fire up the marketing engine over the summer, and a pre-order date roughly five months out is how a publisher tells the market it intends to keep a release date. That matters because GTA VI has slipped before, first into May 2026 and then to November, each delay announced around six months ahead of the previous target. Opening pre-orders now, well inside that window, reads as Rockstar committing rather than hedging.
The blank where the price should be is the most interesting thing about Thursday's news. Reporting and rumour have circled for months around the possibility that Rockstar could make GTA VI the first major game to charge 100 dollars for a standard edition, a line the industry has flirted with but not crossed. Asking buyers to commit to a pre-order a week before they are told what it costs is an unusual sequence, and one Rockstar can attempt precisely because demand for this title is not in question.
The economics behind that confidence are hard to overstate. The original Grand Theft Auto V remains one of the best-selling entertainment products ever made, and analysts have spent two years treating GTA VI as a release big enough to move Take-Two's share price and, by some estimates, a slice of consumer spending around its launch. A console-only debut, with PC owners told to wait, is itself a commercial choice: it concentrates the first wave of sales on the two platforms where Rockstar can control the rollout.
As Engadget noted, every signal now points to the game arriving on schedule for the first time in its long, leak-strewn development. Five months out, the date is set, the cover is out, and the pre-order window has a start time. What players still cannot do is the one thing the announcement was ostensibly about: find out what they are being asked to pay.
