Grand Theft Auto 6 is easily the most anticipated game of November 2026, and the year in general, but that wasn’t always the case. Previously, it had been the most anticipated game of May 2026, and before that Fall 2025, and before that 2025 in general. The amount of delays that have hit this game has been staggering, although not unprecedented, and has led to even some wondering whether it will truly hit its November 2026 release date at this point.

Well, for many, it actually won’t, as GTA 6 has technically been delayed yet again. In fact, this could be the game’s biggest delay, as for many, GTA 6 will be unplayable at launch. The reason for that is, of course, that Grand Theft Auto 6 isn’t primed to release on PC at the same time as consoles. Fortunately, as perhaps a little bit of solace, a former Rockstar producer has revealed why this huge delay is happening, and perhaps even when fans can expect it to end.

Rockstar fans may not have been terribly surprised to hear that GTA 6 isn’t releasing on PC at launch, as that has been a fairly standard practice for a lot of the studio’s games since its inception. Indeed, it is still unsurprising that we may get a GTA 6 Nintendo Switch 2 port before the game even graces Steam’s storefront. This is, at the very least, the view of veteran Rockstar producer, John Ricchio, who recently spoke about why GTA 6 was likely delayed on PC, and why we may not see it on that platform for a while.

Ricchio, who worked on Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Max Payne 3 during his time at Rockstar, went on the Kiwi Talks podcast to discuss all things Rockstar and the gaming industry at large. During the interview, host Reece Reilly asked him about Rockstar’s tendency to develop games specifically for consoles, rather than PC, and Ricchio explained that, unsurprisingly, it was for a number of reasons.

The first is that developing for PC first and then console closer to launch “causes so [many] problems down the end,” and that “you’re much better off starting with the constraints.” Ostensibly, working within limitations and then porting to a platform with few constraints is easier than condensing a project down the line, especially in the rush toward launch, or, as Ricchio puts it “shrinking is a lot harder than extending.” Of course, the other reason is time and money, and whether making a PC port, or really any port, is worthwhile. Ricchio explained:

“It’s not even that, you know, we don’t care about PC, it’s just is it worth spending time getting a PC port going versus working on GTA 5, you know what I mean. It’s always those conversations, it’s never any specific anti-any platform. It’s just, is it worth spending the time and effort to get something running on Switch, or something like that, or Wii. Who knows. I think you have to make those calls per game […] It just becomes about ‘if you’re working on that, you’re not working on something else’, ‘are you spending money on that, or spending money on something else’. So, that’s where the business case has to be. There has to be enough of a business reason to do some of those ports, or the lift has to be so light that it would be super easy to do.”

That isn’t to say that Rockstar has no intentions of making a PC port, but that, right now, it may not be worth the time and money, especially if the studio is working on getting GTA 6 Online working on consoles first. Interestingly, Ricchio even discusses how Rockstar had a PC build of Red Dead Redemption running while developing that game, although it evidently didn’t believe it was worth investing the money in at the time, as an official PC port didn’t release until 14 years later. Fortunately, it wasn’t as drastic for RDR2, which released a year later.

Of course, this doesn’t quite alleviate GTA 6 PC fans’ frustrations, but it should at least explain Rockstar’s intentions a little better. Based on Red Dead Redemption 2’s path to PC, it seems likely that Grand Theft Auto 6 will be ported to the platform by next year, especially as Rockstar will want to make as much money from GTA 6 Online as possible, and the fastest way to do that is to make GTA 6 available to as many people as possible.