GTA 6 May Have Competition As ‘Biggest-Budget AAA Game’ Sets Release Window Target

The release of Grand Theft Auto VI is undoubtedly the most anticipated game for the foreseeable future. Its arrival in the middle of 2026 will likely smash all kinds of records and generate Rockstar Games billions of dollars over a decade or more in the process.

All of that is pretty much signed, sealed and delivered at this point, but there is another game that could blow up when it does release, and fans have been waiting just as long for it to drop as they have GTA.

Star Citizen is a multiplayer space trading and combat game that originally started as a community backed project on Kickstarter in 2012, raising $2 million in its initial run. As of April 2025, the game had raised a staggering $800 million dollars from individuals, venture capital and purchases from customers, but there hasn't been too much in the way of news about a complete release date.

As reported by WCCFTech, head honcho Chris Roberts had been reticent to attach a particular release date to the game, but that has now changed, with Roberts targeting 2027 or 2028 for the 1.0 version.

The game is currently in early access and there are plenty of development points still to hit on the game's roadmap.

Expectant fans will get to play the single-player campaign in 2026, Squadron 42. That features one of the most bonkers casts you'll ever see in video games or anywhere else, including Gillian Anderson, Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman and Mark Strong.

Roberts describes it as a mix of Top Gun and Star Wars (which admittedly sounds very cool), before going on to say that he hopes it will be "almost as big an event" as the release of GTA VI.

Whether that will be the case is very much up in the air at this point, but with the amount of money that has been spent on the game, it's fairly crucial that it's a major success.