Grand Theft Auto V pushed back to September 17
Take Two stock falls as game slips from previous "spring" target.

by Kyle Orland - Jan 31 2013

Rockstar Games has been showing off Grand Theft Auto V for over a year now without a release date. That silence ended today when the company announced a September 17, 2013 arrival for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions (no official word yet on a PC release).

Rockstar had previously given a vague "spring 2013" launch window for the next entry in its best-selling series and merely noted in a press release today that the delay was "in order to allow additional development time."

The stock market reacted quickly to the news. The price of Take Two on the NASDAQ dropped about 10 percent almost immediately to $11.60 a share, but it has since rebounded and stabilized at $12.30 as of this writing. Electronic Arts, on the other hand, saw its share price spike 4 percent to $15.74 per share. Stock in game retailer GameStop has been declining steadily all day and has currently lost 4 percent of its value.

The upcoming game takes place in Los Santos, a city the developer is calling "the biggest, most dynamic, and most diverse open world Rockstar Games has yet created." In a change for the series, GTA V will focus on the intertwining stories of three different controllable criminals: a "former street gangster," a "professional ex-con," and "a violent maniac," as Rockstar puts it.