After over a year of speculation about when the hugely-anticipated fifth entry into the Grand Theft Auto series was going to be released, Rockstar finally dropped the bombshell in a statement that it won’t be hitting stores until September 17th of this year.
This will be a shock to many players, given Rockstar’s own announcement 3 months ago that it would be hitting the shelves sometime this Spring. Anticipating disappointment from the announcement, Rockstar made what should have been a jubilant declaration seem more like an apologetic whimper:
“Today, we have an official release date to share with you: Grand Theft Auto V will arrive in stores on September 17, 2013.
We know this is about four months later than originally planned and we know that this short delay will come as a disappointment to many of you, but, trust us, it will be worth the extra time. GTAV is a massively ambitious and complex game and it simply needs a little more polish to be of the standard we and, more importantly, you require.
To all Grand Theft Auto fans, please accept our apologies for the delay, and our promise that the entire team here is working very hard to make the game all it can be. We are doing all we can to help ensure it will meet if not exceed your expectations come September – we thank you for your support and patience.”
It’s a blow to players the world over, who were hoping that GTA V might be released over the Easter period (giving them a 4-day period to blast through it uninterrupted), and at the very least, that it should show up around the end of May and see us through the usual summer gaming drought.
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7 Comments
I like Grand Theft Auto. It’s a great series, but the coverage this game gets on this website is a bit ridiculous. There are other games out there. In my opinion, the sandbox genre is filled with great games today. How about looking into the next Just Cause game, or going over some Saints Row 4′s new features.
I’m bored of waiting for this game.
Might just pack up my console and get a life
Carbon copy on GTA IV. They released a trailer too early, delayed the game and then it turned out to be a slight disappointment.
GTA IV was a decent game in it’s own right but “claustrophobic” is a good adjective for it. Those of us that thought GTA San Andreas was absolutely brilliant can’t wait for this game because it will be an updated map of the same area and some of the activities in GTA SA weren’t included in GTA IV. If they are going to perfect it, it should be worth the wait.
This announcement really sucks. Looks like I going to give the game a miss. Watch Dogs is the game I am looking towards now.
fekkin rockstar!!!! Well at least i can enjoy the new simcity for awhile then…
I think its great news. As a GTA fan whos played all GTA games, im used to them launching in October (All GTA games apart from GTAIV were launched in October) so its like a tradition to play it over the Autumn and Winter. My fondest gaming memorys were playing GTAIII over Winter 2001 and GTA San Andreas over Christmas 2004 was just the greatest ever, i often bust GTA San Andreas out every Autumn and Winter and think i always will. When GTAIV was canceled from an October 2007 release to April 2008 it was just ‘meh’, was great an everything but a spring release was odd and didnt make the game as great as the others for me. I will either get this for my birthday in October or save it for Christmas (Christmas is when i do the most gaming =D)