GTA V Release Date Rumour Round-Up

Eagle-eyed GTA fans might have seen that online retailer Zavvi yesterday listed a release date for Grand Theft Auto V, sending the online world into typical melt-down as a million bloggers' keyboards melted under furious thundering fingers. The retailer originally listed the release date advanced by the supplier as 23rd November, prompting fans and commenters to question whether they knew something nobody else did about Rockstar's upcoming hotly-anticipated epic. They even went as far as to confirm the source of the date:

"I can confirm that this is the release date forward by our supplier. If the release date change, our website will be updated immediately."

But all, typically was not as it seemed, and Zavvi got in touch with Eurogamer to confirm that the date is "a date waiting," and is not based on a "confirmation from our supplier on the release date of Grand Theft Auto V ". The retailer also added that "The date of November 23 has been removed from our website," presumably before scrabbling furiously to find out whoever it was that jumped the gun and having some strong words with them. So far, the release date rumour-mill has churned out a number of dates, the first being Autumn 2012, which was spotted by MCV on a retail calendar highlighting all of the upcoming major games, including a Dark Knight Rises tie-in, which has clearly come to nothing. Probably one to wipe off your white board. Meanwhile Gamestop have listed the release date as 01/03/2013 - something they have still not removed, incidentally, while Blockbuster carried a release date of 10/26/2012, according to Machinima.com director Olli43 who uploaded a Youtube video with a picture he had taken at his local Blockbuster after searching the catalogue of the store and recovering that release date: http://youtu.be/gIALdhOhaZs Next up the Sterne Agee financial analyst group predicted that GTA V will arrive in early 2013 rather than the end of this year in order to allow Rockstar extra time to polish the game, which came via Gamasutra. And then there was a picture of a flyer from Canadian retailer Future Shop which appeared on IGN thanks to reader Antonio LaRosa, which included reference to a release window of Winter 2012. So when's it coming out? Frankly, my dear, I don't have a clue. An October release would fit in with the shape of the market, but it's a big enough release not to follow that trend and Rockstar may wish to avoid competition. At this stage, we're all still in the dark until the developer decide to release some more concrete information than a couple of glossy screen-shots... You can follow all of our Grand Theft Auto V coverage by heading over to our dedicated GTA V hub-page.