Yesterday, Gearbox announced that was moving the release date for Borderlands 4 up by two weeks. Initially, the game was set to release on 23 September. However, the launch date was shifted up to 12 September for unknown reasons. Many speculated that the date shuffle was the result of publisher Take-Two Interactive zeroing in on a concrete release date for GTA 6. Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford says this isn’t the case.
Randy Pitchford took to X to talk about the decision to move up the release date for Borderlands 4. Much to everyone’s surprise, it had nothing to do with GTA 6. “Borderlands 4 shipping early is 100% the result of confidence in the game and development trajectory backed by actual tasks and bug find/fix rates,” said Pitchford. “Our decision is literally 0% about any other product’s actual or theoretical launch date.”
Publisher Take-Two Interactive, which also acts as the parent company of GTA developer Rockstar Games, bought Gearbox for $460 million in March 2024. Gearbox was previously owned by Embracer Group.
As of writing, Take-Two has yet to announce a launch date for GTA 6. The publisher stressed that it was confident in the fall 2025 release window for the anticipated open-world game. Last month, CEO Strauss Zelnick stated that the marketing for GTA 6 would only kick into high gear closer to the game’s release window, explaining the very long drought of news since its reveal trailer debuted in December 2023.
Zelnick explained at the time:
“The anticipation for that title may be the greatest anticipation I’ve ever seen for an entertainment property, and I’ve been around the block a few times, and I’ve been in every entertainment business there is. And we want to maintain the anticipation and the excitement. We do have competitors who will describe their release schedule for years in advance, and we’ve found that the better thing to do is to provide marketing materials relatively close to the release window in order to create that excitement on the one hand, and balance the excitement with unmet anticipation. We don’t always get it exactly right, but that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Borderlands 4 launches on 12 September 2025 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
Source: Video Games Chronicle
