The countdown is on. If all goes according to plan (and that’s a big if), we’ll be playing Grand Theft Auto 6 in just around eight months. That sounds like a very long time when I write it out, but it’s nothing compared to how long the wait has been in the grand scheme of things. Grand Theft Auto 5 launched on Sept. 17, 2013. Players have been messing around in the PS3-era crime game for 12 whole years now.
That’s a lot of time, but have you ever stopped to really consider just how long it is? 12 years is a lengthy enough span that you can categorize it as an era. Political empires have turned over multiple times in that span. Bands that debuted in the early 2010s are now off on nostalgic 10th anniversary album tours. Hell, there are whole middle schoolers out there who have not known a life without Grand Theft Auto 5. You can really begin to empathize with longtime fans, now middle-aged and going gray, who are experiencing existential decay at this point.
So, how much has the world really changed since then? Here’s a short list of what we’ve gotten before Grand Theft Auto 6.
We got two generations of video game consoles before GTA 6
Grand Theft Auto 5 is so old that neither the PlayStation 4 nor the Xbox 360 was out at the time it launched. Both of those machines came out in November 2013, just two months after the game’s September date. We’ve moved on to the PS5 and Xbox Series X since then. We also got two Nintendo console launches, five Meta Quest VR headsets, and countless handheld PCs. At this rate, there’s even an outside chance that Xbox Game Pass collapses before GTA 6 can be born, robbing us of a chance for Rockstar to add it to the service and then hastily pull it a month or two later, as it loves doing.
We got a Virtual Boy comeback before GTA 6
I’m not sure if hell properly froze over between GTA games, but it’s certainly getting more temperate down there these days. That’s thanks in part to the fact that Nintendo recently revealed plans to bring Virtual Boy games to Switch Online, even creating a functional reproduction of the tabletop headset that can be used to play those games. What once would have been an April Fools’ joke has become a reality before GTA 6 could materialize in this world.
We got four American presidential terms before GTA 6
If console generations don’t mean so much to you, this might put it into perspective: The United States has had three different presidents across four terms in the gap between Grand Theft Auto games. GTA 5 dropped right near the beginning of President Barack Obama’s first term, and we went through a full round of Trump and Biden terms with radio silence. GTA 6 is likely to launch in the middle of Trump’s second term, and the man will be nearly 80 years old if the current May release date stands. Bonus fact: Trump was still a reality TV show host when GTA5 came out.
We lost Vine, got and then lost Byte, and got TikTok before GTA 6
Social media is a fickle thing, and you can see that if you chart the apps that came and went over the last 12 years. First there was Vine, which launched the same year as GTA5. The short-form video app would reach peak success in mid 2010s before getting shut down in 2017. A successor called Byte launched in 2020, merged into the Clash app, got renamed as Huddles, and finally got shut down in 2023. TikTok, on the other hand, has lived its entire life waiting for GTA 6, as the app was first released in 2016.
Oh, we got and lost Quibi before GTA 6 too
Right. Anyway.
We got eight Taylor Swift albums (and four re-recorded albums) before GTA 6
While Taylor Swift’s career only kicked off a couple of years after San Andreas released, you can really feel the wait for GTA 6 in her career trajectory over the last 12 years. When GTA5 launched, we were only a year out from Red. 1989, the album that started her true ascent to superstardom, wouldn’t come until 2014. Since then, she’s released several hit records, had two “flop” periods, and fully rerecorded four albums, including 1989. I mean, come on, we got Taylor Swift singing a song about Grand Theft Auto before GTA 6!
We also got Taylor Swift singing about Travis Kelce’s dong before GTA 6
New heights of manhood, I ain’t gotta knock on wood.
We got a ‘lemonade that kills you’ before GTA 6
I just want to point out that Panera did make its Charged Lemonade between GTA games. You know, the highly caffeinated beverage that was named in several lawsuits linking it to wrongful deaths? This isn’t an unbelievable marker of time or anything. I just want the record to show that we did indeed get this before GTA 6.
We got the entire John Wick series before GTA 6
Entire media institutions have risen in the past 12 years, and you can find an easy example of that in John Wick. The first film in the Keanu Reeves-led series was released in 2014. Since then, we have gotten four mainline films, a spinoff movie, a TV show, a tactics video game (which has since been delisted), a VR experience, a comic book miniseries, a documentary about the series that was filmed over a decade, and, of course, a Fortnite crossover. Meanwhile, Keanu Reeves has not aged a day in that time. Bastard.
We got sequels to Good Burger, Happy Gilmore, Top Gun, Spinal Tap, Bill and Ted, Space Jam, The Matrix, and Beverly Hills Cop before GTA 6
While 12 years is a very long wait between games, it’s far from the longest gap between sequels. In fact, plenty of film franchises got sequels in the past 12 years that make the YouTube chat complainers look impatient. Did you know that Netflix’s Happy Gilmore 2 was released 29 years after the original film? Or that there were 36 years between Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick? Go tell a Miami Vice fan how long you’ve waited to return to Vice City and they will put you in a Vice Grip.
Okay, the wait could have been worse, I suppose.
Other things we got before GTA 6
- We got Hollow Knight, a long Silksong hype cycle, and Silksong itself before GTA 6.
- We got 19 Call of Duty games, excluding remasters, before GTA 6.
- We got Chris Pratt as Mario before GTA 6.
- We got Bowsette before GTA 6.
- We got a pandemic before GTA 6.
- We got three McRib returns before GTA 6.
- We got 28 movies featuring The Rock, including San Andreas, before GTA 6.
- We got a SouljaBoy game console before GTA 6.
- We got whatever the hell happened with NFTs before GTA 6.
- We got CM Punk quitting WWE and returning a decade later before GTA 6.
- We got Until Dawn and then a remake of Until Dawn before GTA 6.
- We got 30 MCU movies before GTA 6.
- We got 46 seasons of Chopped before GTA 6.
- We got 534 One Piece episodes before GTA 6.
- We got White Claw before GTA 6.
- We got Homestuck’s conclusion and, like, three rivals before GTA 6.
- We got a Sonic the Hedgehog redemption arc before GTA 6.
- We got Derek Carr’s entire NFL career before GTA 6.
- We got Martin Luther King Jr. in Fortnite before GTA 6.
- We got Fortnite, period, before GTA 6.
- We got an entire Star Wars trilogy before GTA 6.
- We got Baby Yoda before GTA 6.
- We got “Mayochup” before GTA 6.
- We got an Oasis reunion before GTA 6.
- We got this meme and ran it into the ground before GTA 6.
- We got a live birth on Twitch before GTA 6.
- We did not get Bully 2 before GTA 6. Sorry.
