Is GTA 6 an AAA Game, What Was the First AAA Game, and Is GTA 6 the Most Anticipated Game Ever

Rockstar’s next blockbuster feels too big to fail, and that’s exactly the problem.

Grand Theft Auto V is the second best-selling game ever, trailing only Minecraft. Nothing else is close. After more than a decade, it’s no surprise expectations for Grand Theft Auto VI are astronomical. But the gravitational pull around its release has grown beyond fan hype or LinkedIn-fueled bullishness. The mood now borders on desperation. GTA 6 will be huge. GTA 6 must be huge.

That’s how you get statements like this. “There are AAA games and then there are AAAA games, and I’d argue Grand Theft Auto is potentially the AAAAA game—it’s bigger than anything else, both in scope and scale, and in the cultural impact and attention it commands,” Devolver Digital co-founder Nigel Lowrie told IGN this week.

Lowrie was talking about how smaller studios try to navigate modern release calendars where a single megahit can vacuum up all available oxygen before anyone’s even tried your game. Few publishers dared plant flags for the fall until Rockstar announced GTA 6’s delay to May 2026. Even now, Hollow Knight: Silksong’s surprise date last month sent scores of indie projects scrambling away from its September 4 launch.

Lowrie’s point was that GTA 6 can “blot out the sun.” “AAAAA” isn’t just a nod to a rumored $1+ billion development budget or a marketing spend that could run into the hundreds of millions. It’s not only about the crater in consumer spending that follows, with lifetime sales projected in the tens of billions including any new GTA Online. It’s a prediction that the game will funnel collective boredom and curiosity into a cultural singularity—outpacing everything from 2023’s Barbenheimer to this year’s viral “Coldplay couple.” Like the bond-rating shorthand gaming borrowed for “AAA,” “AAAAA” functions as much as a forecast as it does a metric.

Publishers want to sell an ocean of copies, and players want those games to be great—occasionally even life-changing. But with GTA 6 there’s as much hope for a transformative moment as there is dread if it fails to deliver one. After years in the driver’s seat, console gaming has stalled. Industry boosters love to say games are bigger than Hollywood or sports, but growth over the last five years has been basically flat. Roblox’s rise is great for its investors and yet another sign that traditional gaming is on the back foot.

Beyond the numbers, the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S era has felt oddly unexceptional. Plenty of excellent games, sure, but few that feel hardware-defining the way late-PS4 and Xbox One hits did. Fans hunting for that unmistakable “next-gen” spark wind up parsing Digital Foundry breakdowns like lapsed believers clinging to forensics.

Consoles struggle to differentiate themselves the way smartphones keep adding camera lenses to sell you on what’s essentially more RAM. Leaks suggest new Sony and Microsoft hardware is only a couple of years out—and will bring an even smaller generational leap. Why should they rush if half the current install base won’t upgrade? I can’t wait for system architect Mark Cerny to explain how much better Joel and Ellie’s hair looks in The Last of Us Part I when it arrives on PS6.

So what does an “AAAAA” label on GTA 6 really mean? That it’s the one game people still believe can bend those curves. The proof point for what PS5 and Series X/S—its launch platforms—can truly do, from cutscene-grade gunplay animations to photoreal condensation on beer bottles. A best-seller that not only moves units but reignites console sales to grow the total install base. Evidence, perhaps, that the most polished craftsmanship money can buy can still capture imaginations as powerfully as a crudely reskinned Cookie Clicker on Roblox.

Even if GTA 6 showers shareholders with a historic windfall, failure to deliver on those broader hopes would be the clearest sign yet that “AAA”—and the aura farming it sustains—was junk-bond status all along.