Grand Theft Auto V is fast approaching its seventh birthday, but we've now got our first hint of when the inevitable GTA VI is set to appear thanks to an annual report filing by publisher Take-Two.
As VentureBeat reports, Take-Two recently filed its latest 10-K report with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) offering a comprehensive summary of the company's financial performance. The report also includes details of marketing spending for the next five years. In the past, such detail has been used to predict the the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2, and now it points to the GTA VI release window.
The 10-K filing reveals a planned marketing spend of $89 million over the course of the financial year ending March 31, 2024. That's a huge spike in marketing costs compared to the other years predicted spending, which breaks down as $11.8 million for 2021, $38.9 million for 2022, $40.9 million for 2023, and $35.5 million for 2025.
According to Jeff Cohen, analyst at investment firm Stephens, GTA VI had already been predicted for release in the 2023 financial year and these latest marketing spend figures back that up. The fact Take-Two intends to spend the marketing money over the course of a year suggests pre- and post-release marketing between March 2023 and 2024. GTA V launched in September, which could be repeated for the GTA VI launch.
Rockstar can afford to take its time developing GTA VI seeing as GTA V sales have topped 130 million and Grand Theft Auto Online continues to be played. Such popularity does, however, put mounting pressure on the development team to deliver another huge hit.
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