Gearbox’s highly anticipated first-person shooter, Borderlands 4, is set to launch earlier than initially planned, with the release date now moved up by 11 days. Development chief Randy Pitchford announced this exciting news in a video that was inadvertently released early. Originally scheduled for September 23, Borderlands 4 will now hit the shelves on September 12, available on 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 added with excitement, “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 mentioned that a PlayStation State of Play event focused on Borderlands 4 is expected to be released soon.
This unexpected shift in the release schedule has sparked speculation about its potential connection to the looming release of Grand Theft Auto 6 (GTA 6). Currently slated for a fall 2025 release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, GTA 6's vague launch window has raised questions about whether Borderlands 4’s new date is a strategic move to avoid competition. It’s noteworthy that Borderlands 4 is published by 2K Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two, which also owns Rockstar, the developer of GTA 6. At the executive level, including CEO Strauss Zelnick, there is likely a comprehensive understanding of the release schedules and strategies for all Take-Two titles, aiming to maximize their success.
With Borderlands 4 set to release on September 12, 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 windows for GTA 6. However, there's a risk of Take-Two's major titles, particularly GTA 6, potentially overshadowing each other if released too closely together. This concern is compounded by the upcoming release of another 2K title, Mafia: The Old Country, slated for summer 2025.
In an interview conducted in February, IGN asked Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick about the potential for their big games to cannibalize each other's sales. Zelnick responded by emphasizing that Take-Two plans its releases to avoid such risks, 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 is also the possibility that GTA 6 might be delayed into early winter or the first quarter of 2026. When questioned by IGN about the confidence in meeting the fall 2025 release for GTA 6, Zelnick replied 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.”
