What a year it could turn out to be for Microsoft!
- by Ben Kerry
Well, the elephant has finally been caught and led out of the room; GTA 6 has officially been delayed to May 2026. That move has felt like an inevitability for months and months now, especially in the absence of a proper 2025 release date or even a follow-up trailer to Rockstar’s 2023 debut effort. Still, the news has finally landed – and that means Xbox can really start plotting its fall 2025 lineup.
For now, we know that the team has The Outer Worlds 2 planned for later this year, with the Obsidian title set for a big blowout during an Xbox Direct Showcase this summer. Even putting aside any other potential Xbox releases for later this year, TOW2 will benefit from GTA 6’s timely bump. The Rockstar series just saps all of the air out of the room – and with that title now moved to next May, The Outer Worlds 2 will get more eyes on it pretty much by default.
However, we can’t say that’s what excites us the most about this delay… not quite. We’re still expecting a couple of other major Xbox titles to launch this fall – and today’s news might have just given Microsoft a bit more confidence to get some of them out of the door ASAP. Gears of War: E-Day has been rumoured for this year a few times, although a 2026 release has also been banded around as well. Will GTA 6’s delay give Xbox the impetus to make sure Gears releases this year? If the game is ready to go, we’d absolutely love to be playing a new Gears of War game in the fall.
We know that the way games are made seems to have drastically changed this generation, but if developer The Coalition wants to follow in the footsteps of its previous releases, fall 2025 does make sense. Gears of War 4 was revealed in summer 2015 before releasing the following fall, Gears 5 took on a similar trajectory in 2018 / 2019 – and E-Day was revealed last summer. The long road home points towards a new Gears game coming out later this year, if we’re lucky (bonus points for the Gears fans that get that reference).
There is, of course, something else in the mix that’s about as inevitable as Rockstar’s GTA 6 delay – a new Call of Duty game coming out later this year. Although this hasn’t been revealed by Xbox yet, it’s coming, and could actually be the game that benefits the most from this GTA pushback. There’s a lot of crossover between the sorts of folks that would go out and buy GTA or COD, and after a 12-year absence, you can bet that if those players had to choose one they’d go for GTA 6 this year. That’s no longer an issue though – and it looks like COD 2025 will once again have a pretty clear run-in for Microsoft.
Before we throw this one over to you folks in the comments, we must add that none of this is locked-in right now – heck, Xbox hasn’t even revealed the full release date for The Outer Worlds 2 yet, never mind anything else. But, whatever happens, you can bet that Xbox’s fall 2025 lineup will benefit massively from GTA 6 moving to May 2026 – and there might even be some faint cheering over at Microsoft HQ right now as it plots the rest of Xbox’s 2025 schedule.
Are you happy to see GTA 6 move and get dated? What do you want to see Xbox do this fall? Talk to us about the prospect down below.
Ben is a News Writer at Pure Xbox, and is a fan of action, racing and straight-up shootin’ in any Xbox game he can get his hands on. When he’s not clutching an Xbox controller like his life depends on it, Ben spends his time listening to music that’s far too old for him, watching football on the telly and probably eating somewhere.
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