Borderlands 4 Release Moved Up 11 Days: Impact on GTA 6 Launch?

Gearbox's eagerly awaited first-person shooter, Borderlands 4, is set to hit the shelves 11 days earlier than initially planned. Development chief Randy Pitchford made this exciting announcement in a video that inadvertently went live ahead of schedule. Originally slated for a September 23 release, Borderlands 4 will now launch on September 12, available across PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Nintendo Switch 2.

In the video, Pitchford expressed his enthusiasm, stating, "Everything is going great, actually. In fact, everything is going kind of the best-case scenario. The game is awesome, the team is cooking, and so the launch date for Borderlands 4 is changing. We're moving it forward. The launch date is now September 12."

He further exclaimed, "What?! This never happens you guys! This never happens! We're moving the launch date forward! You're gonna get Borderlands 4 earlier!" Pitchford also teased that a PlayStation State of Play focused on Borderlands 4 would be released imminently.

The decision to advance the release date of Borderlands 4 has sparked speculation about its timing in relation to the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 (GTA 6), which is set to launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S sometime in the fall of 2025. This vague release window has led to questions about whether Borderlands 4's new date is a strategic move to avoid direct competition with GTA 6.

It's important to note that Borderlands 4 is published by 2K Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two, which also owns Rockstar, the developer behind GTA 6. At the executive level, including CEO Strauss Zelnick, there is likely a strategic overview of all game releases to ensure each title has the best chance of success. The possibility that GTA 6's release date became clearer recently might have influenced the decision to move Borderlands 4's release forward.

With Borderlands 4 set for a September 12 release, it seems unlikely that GTA 6 will launch in the same month or in August. This leaves October, November, or December 2025 as potential release dates for GTA 6. However, there's a risk that Take-Two might inadvertently cause its major 2025 titles to compete against each other if released too closely. Another 2K game, Mafia: The Old Country, is also slated for a summer 2025 release, adding to the complexity of Take-Two's release schedule.

In an interview with IGN in February, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick addressed concerns about potential cannibalization among the company's big releases. Zelnick emphasized that Take-Two plans its release schedule to avoid such issues, stating, "No, I think we will plan the releases so as not to have that be a problem. And what we found is when you're giving consumers hits, they tend to be interested in pursuing other hits. In other words, I've said this many times, even when the hits aren't ours, they're a good thing for the industry. In this case, we hope that the hits will largely be ours. So we feel really good about it and I think that we will time our releases so as to respect the consumer's need to spend a lot of time playing these hit games before they go on to the next."

Amidst this speculation, there's also the possibility that GTA 6 could face delays, potentially pushing its release into early winter or even the first quarter of 2026. When asked about the confidence in hitting the fall 2025 target for GTA 6, Zelnick responded cautiously, "Look, there's always a risk of slippage and I think as soon as you say words like absolutely, you jinx things. So we feel really good about it."