Games Inbox: Will GTA 6 be delayed until 2027?

The Friday letters page laments the death of Guitar Hero and rhythm action games, as one reader claims Final Fantasy 8 is his favourite entry.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Perfect timing
It’s hard not to read the report on GTA 6’s progress and not be worried about another delay. My gut tells me they will hit the November release date, just because it’s a good time of the year and people are beginning to lose patience but just imagine what would happen if they released GTA 6 and it was a buggy mess or not that great.

Cyberpunk 2077 proves you can come back from anything, but the press will have a field day with GTA 6 if it doesn’t live up to expectations. And it took a long time for Cyberpunk to recover, during which there was talk of CD Projekt being sold off, so I’m going to guess that’s not the sort of reaction Rockstar and Take-Two want.

The idea that they’ve not yet started polishing does worry me though. It’s easy to assume from that, that either the game’s going to be delayed until 2027 or it will be buggy. The GTA 3 remasters show Rockstar can put out janky rubbish if they think they can get away with it, but I just hope that they have contingencies for all this and realise that not only does GTA 6 need to be perfect but it also has to actually come out at some point.
Zeiss

One or done
I really hope that Fable turns out to be good. It seems so long since the idea of a reboot was first talked about and we’ve seen so little of it in the meantime. Playground Games do good work with Forza Horizon, so I’m hopeful it’ll work, but those are two very different kinds of games.

I imagine that was part of the problem, in it taking so long, but if this doesn’t impress then that’s going to be the end of the franchise, and whatever team was making it (they’ll keep the Forza Horizon people).

It’s really terrible how so often nowadays the failure of a single game can mean the end of a whole franchise and hundreds of job losses. Here’s hoping that the Developer Direct goes well and isn’t a Suicide Squad style disaster.
Wotan

Turbo milking
Maybe I’m just slow but for me Guitar Hero was the point that I realised that the companies in charge of gaming really haven’t got a clue what they’re doing. Activision could’ve kept that franchise running forever – it was super popular when it came out and non-gamers loved it – but instead they ran it into the ground at warp speed and the whole thing was over in just a few years.

I doubt that this new game will do that well because nowadays plastic guitars are just associated with a weird fad that quickly became uncool, but that didn’t have to happen. If they’d taken their time and tried to innovate, they would be more than a one franchise company and music games might not have been killed off before their time.
Focus

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Seasonal gaming
I know it’s unusual, and there is the problem of whether you can get back the same voice actors, but I really like the idea of coming back to a game after a decade or so and giving it new DLC. A new sequel is a good excuse but I’m happy for it at any time, especially when it’s a game as good as The Witcher 3.

I’d love to see new expansions for Skyrim or anything from FromSoftware. Or definitely the story DLC that games like GTA 5 and God Of War never got. If companies are so keen on live service titles then they could create something like it just by constantly giving single-player games new content. I’d much rather that than watch them waste millions on another identikit online shooter.

I never liked the idea of episodic gaming but if they can make them more like TV seasons, where you get a new expansion every year or two, I think that would be a lot more appealing to most people. If the new Witcher 3 expansion is successful then maybe we’ll see it set a trend.
Brammo

Good publicity
I am fascinated to see what MachineGames will be allowed to get away with when it comes to Wolfenstein 3. Things are a lot different now than they used to be and for me the big question is are Bethesda going to sanitise the new game or are they going to push for it to be as anti-Nazi as possible, in order to get as much publicity as possible. We won’t know until there’s an annoucement, but it could go either way.

Speaking of MachineGames, I hope they get to make a Quake game too. It seems like they were training for that for years and I was really looking forward to a single-player game in their usual style, with optional multiplayer, just like the original game. A Rainbow Six Siega knock-off is absolutely not what I want to see from them next.
Limpton
PS: Also, where’s that second bit of Indiana Jones And The Great Circle DLC?

Power paradox
I also think there’s a reasonable (let’s say 50/50) chance of seeing a new mainline Zelda trailer this year. Something less than a minute long and not really showing much, just like they usually do. But show a new Link and a glimpse at a bit of new landscape and you’ll have fans talking for years (including me).

I do think it’s weird that the 40th anniversary is in barely more than a month, though, and there’s no new game. Come to that, Pokémon’s 30th anniversary is also next month, and they don’t seem to have announced anything for that either. Missing one anniversary is no big deal but Nintendo seem to be doing it more than not now, to the point where it just seems completely random when they do acknowledge one.

I think we have to accept that we are in a new era where Nintendo is suffering all the same problems as everyone else and they can’t put out new games as often as they used to. Things take too long now, for everyone, and presumable they’re more expensive for Nintendo too.

That’s not the end of the world, except I worry it’s going to make them more worried about experimenting. We’ve had not a hint of a new IP yet for the Switch 2 (no, Drag x Drive does not count) and I’m not sure who’d bet on when the next one will arrive.

I get that they have to pay the bills, like any other company, but I’m beginning to wish the Switch 2 hadn’t been that much more powerful after all.
Keef

Hateful eight
In all these years I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone talk about remastering Final Fantasy 8, which confuses me as I thought it was generally pretty well liked. Was that just me and the game is secretly hated or something?

I imagine the game’s not easy to remaster, because of the pre-rendered backdrops, but 9 had them as well and there’s been lots of rumours of that getting a glow-up. Admittedly that doesn’t seem to have happened yet, but I’d rather have had 8 anyway.

Am I the only person who thinks it’s their favourite Final Fantasy? I won’t say it’s the best, because it’s probably nostalgia talking, but it is the one I think of first when I think of older games.
Molb

Unknown presents
A little late to the party when it comes to what I got for Christmas, but I wanted to share my experience of opening gaming presents in front of family who don’t game at all.

My wonderful wife got me two gaming presents this year that I had asked for. On the day, when it was my turn to open a present, I first happily opened Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the title of which alone made many eyes glaze over. I briefly explained that it was 2025’s Game of the Year and allowed the present opening to continue.

My turn came again and I open NiGHTS Into Dreams for the Sega Saturn ‘with the special controller you need to get the most out of the game’. Cue the bemused smiles and lack of follow-up questions.

Needless to say, I’m very excited to play both of my gifts. However, when the other side of the family came on Boxing Day and asked what I’d got for Christmas, I showed them the lovely dressing gown and slipper combo I’d received instead.
Ed

GC: NiGHTS Into Dreams is definitely a nice present, it’s worth quite a bit now.

Inbox also-rans
I wish I could be optimistic about the new Life Is Strange game but the last one was such a disaster I’m not sure I’ll even bother trying it. One of the worst sequels I’ve ever played.
Gibson

I’m not going to argue over Mortal Kombat Mythologies being a terrible game but I will say that the Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection was really good. I appreciate the amount of work they put into it and that even the bad games were included. Completeness matters!
Lang440bell

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