GTA 6 pre-orders still unopened, earliest realistic window is late June

GTA 6 pre-orders are still unopened, and Strauss Zelnick made the cleanest statement of the week on May 21: Take-Two had “absolutely no idea” when they would begin. That answer mattered because it cut through the Best Buy affiliate-email chatter and the wider fan habit of treating every storefront update like a hidden countdown timer.

Take-Two’s own numbers point to a much more deliberate rollout. In its May 15, 2025 earnings release, the company projected fiscal 2026 net bookings of $5.9 billion to $6.0 billion and said that as it brought its lineup to market, including Grand Theft Auto VI in fiscal 2027, it expected record levels of net bookings. In other words, the game sits inside a bigger commercial plan, not a random retailer switch that can be flipped by a leaked email or a placeholder page.

Rockstar has already shown how carefully it wants to stage this cycle. On May 2, 2025, the studio publicly delayed Grand Theft Auto VI and said the game was then set to release on May 26, 2026. That delay reset expectations once already, and it reinforced the pattern Rockstar has used throughout this rollout: formal announcements first, market noise later. Take-Two also said GTA 6 marketing would begin “this summer,” which pushes the pre-order conversation into a later beat rather than the earnings call itself.

That is why the most useful read on the situation is not that pre-orders are imminent, but that they are not tied to retailer wishlists, affiliate pages, or fan speculation about a May 18 window. The Best Buy rumor circulated, but it never hardened into a confirmed sales date, and Zelnick’s answer made clear that Take-Two had not locked one in publicly. If the current framing holds, the earliest realistic window is late June, when the summer marketing push would finally give Rockstar the official runway to open purchase pages.

For now, the message is simple: no hidden pre-order switch is waiting to be thrown this week. The real signal is still ahead, and until Rockstar starts the marketing beat it has been promising, the GTA 6 storefronts remain closed.