I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but GTA 6 pre-orders are now live. And with that announcement came the explicit wording from developer Rockstar that it is “a single-player” experience. That leaves a lot of questions about what the next iteration of GTA Online will look like, how much extra it will cost (if anything), and when we’ll be able to play it.

I won’t lie to you, I have absolutely no concrete information about either of these points – Rockstar hasn’t even confirmed that there is a new GTA Online. We all just believe it’s inevitable because a) the current version is a globe-dominating money maker, and b) Rockstar’s two biggest games of the last two generations have both had MMO-like multiplayer modes. But this lack of an official announcement is not going to stop me from theorising – there’s much we can learn by looking back at how the original GTA Online was rolled out and how Rockstar then handled Red Dead’s equivalent.

GTA 5 was first released back on September 17, 2013. To give people time to play through its multi-protagonist campaign, GTA Online arrived two weeks later. But maybe it shouldn’t have. Launched in a nearly unplayable state, it would take several weeks and patches for it to find its feet. Since then, though, it's been nothing short of a smash success, steadily building an impressive catalogue of missions, heists, and user-generated content updates that have turned it into the beast it is today. So, could whatever GTA 6’s online mode arrive within a similar timeframe? Will we be teaming up on the streets of Vice City on December 3? That seems unlikely.

Firstly, Rockstar just doesn’t need to rush it out, with GTA 6’s single-player campaign already set to eclipse the sales of any video game launch to date. Why push Online out there within that late November window when you could profit from another whole hype cycle later on?

At the very earliest, I expect Online to arrive around a month after GTA 6. I say that because Rockstar is including a month’s membership to GTA+ with pre-orders, the subscription service that offers access and bonuses to its library of games. So, could GTA 6 Online devilishly arrive when most players’ free trial is just a day or two from ending, thus convincing many to keep paying for the service? Especially if that service comes loaded with some really tempting new extras for GTA 6 Online’s launch. We’ve already seen the extras bundled with the Ultimate Edition and how they’ve already tempted pre-orders. Would players diving into the new version of Online want to do it without the GTA+ bonuses?

A month-long wait would also parallel Red Dead Online, which arrived almost exactly a month after Red Dead Redemption 2. It did so in a beta state, however, with Rockstar having learned some of the lessons from GTA Online’s rocky launch. It wasn’t until six months later, in May 2019, that Red Dead Online graduated to its 1.0 form. So, could a similar path be followed here for GTA 6 Online? A good number of games scheduled for early 2027 will certainly be hoping so.

If GTA 6’s iteration of Online was to follow Red Dead’s blueprint and launch properly in May 2027, then the flurry of big games already settling in for February and March will be relieved at the breathing room this gives them. The likes of Fable, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, and Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis will feel like they can hold firm with their current release dates. However, it would be bad news for publishers currently planning for a spring release – we’ve already seen a pile-up of releases make September a daunting proposition due to publishers giving the single-player side of GTA 6 a wide berth, so the last thing devs working on upcoming games need is the (probably) next biggest multiplayer game of all time landing during their planned window.

This threat – that GTA 6 gets effectively two launches – possibly also explains why so many games haven’t yet given firm release dates. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake is due this year, but we don’t know when. God of War: Laufey is another that will want its own time in the spotlight, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony is waiting for the other GTA shoe to drop first before locking in a date.

As for what GTA 6 Online may actually look like, well, that’s very much in the air. Will it once again be part of the GTA package you purchase when you pick up the single-player, or will it be its own game? Will a standalone game be free-to-play, financed through the gargantuan profits of the campaign and an endless supply of Shark Cards, or will it demand another premium price tag, or even a subscription to GTA+? Rockstar steadfastly refuses to discuss Online at all, so we’ve no idea, although we can take a reasonable guess at the shape of some things. For example, I wouldn’t expect it to completely replace the existing GTA Online, seeing as PC players still have no idea when they’ll be able to get their hands on GTA 6, and with so many people still enjoying their games on the previous generation of PS4 and Xbox One consoles, it would be foolish for Rockstar to shut down those Shark Card-infested microtransaction waters.

In terms of gameplay, I think we can largely expect it to follow a familiar formula to what we’ve seen from GTA Online over the past decade. If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it, after all. But one thing I would expect is a further emphasis placed on user-generated content, which I wrote about in more depth here, as well as my concerns around it.

What do you think GTA Online will look like, and when do you think we’ll get to play it? Let us know in the comments!

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.