So I was thiking about GTA Online, and then thought of s omething.  GTA Online is already complete and that's just a bs reason for delay.  They delay is an attack against used games sales.  The delay is only two weeks, any longer and people would probably get impatient and not care about the online, however during that two weeks, you'll have people keeping their copies, less used copies able to be found, so more new sales.  The first month is when the game is relevant, so as soon as it passes that month, they're not going to  get many sales in comparison to what they gained during the first month.

So Rockstar just fixed it so they would only have half a month they have to worry about the used games market cutting into their profits.  It's a smart move. 

You realise that they made about $150m profit on day 1?

And GTA is a game that people would play for months anyway, I don't buy this theory at all

GTA V is one game I would never sell.
But then, I never sell my games

They don't have to, but it gets them more money.  What do you guys really think they can do with two weeks of time.  Find and fix bugs while waiting for the release date.

Also, used games hurt all games, not just small and mid range selling games.  While GTA5 and Call of Duty make far more money because they get far more new game sales, they also have the chance to lose more money to used games sasles because there are more copies out there to be sold as used games. 

Look at it in this perspective.  You have 20 million Call of Duty games and 200,000 Yakuza 4 games, If one percent of the Call of Duty games purchased are sold used or traded into Gamestop, etc, it amounts to 200,000.  That's only one percent of total sales and it's equal to the total amount of sales of Yakuza 4, so yeah, Call of Duty is losing far more through used games than a game like Yakuza 4 ever will.   

So while Rockstar doesn't need to do this with GTA5, by doing so will make them more money because during that time, they won't lose as many games to to used sales.  If there's no games at Gamestop being sold as used, how can Gamestop ask if the person purchasing it would like to save $5 buy purchasing used?  And while not everyone says they'll take the used copy, a lot of people do, because buying new doesn't mean as much to them as it does to some of us. 

people who say it made enough profit shouldn't forget that even more profit is still better. you don't just stop to make money because you already made enough to be profitable. take 2 made a loss last fiscal year even with hits like borderlands 2 and nba 2k. they probably made also a loss the fiscal year before and they will probably make a loss the next fiscal years where they won't release a gta game. gta has to fix all these losses of other games and make investors happy to believe in the whole company.

you don't release a product and just look if it makes profit and be happy since the whole company has to be successful and not only a single product. and even if take 2 would make 5 billion profit per year, if investors would think it is possible to make 5.5 billion they will ask for that.

not saying that this is rockstar's and take 2's plan but it could be one reason. they could also release the pc version day one or at least announce it but they won't because pc and console players would buy it only once and not twice and obviously also because of piracy and other stuff...

People don't sell good games - GTA V wouldn't have a used game problem, online or not

Whilst your opinion does make complete sense.

My view is that the online could be unstable with that many users which would result to bad press instead of like 10/10 and 9.8 which could hurt sales slightly. Since most games with online features have issues at launch basically every time. Also, there will likely be patches for the main game, so this allows them to concentrate on unexpected bugs on the single player.

Ofcourse, everything is probably analyzed and there seems to be little benefit in not releasing it later.

maybe an alternative is that they want to launch the online right with out hiccups. the biggest problem for online games is ahving enough servers for all the players in the first few days. By starting the online later they will better know how many may want to play in the first few days, and have enough servers ready for the demand.

I thought that as soon as they announced the delay. but also they may just give it 2 weeks so that people will play and finish the single player and alot of the gta fanbase is a multi player only base

I do love a good conspiracy theory. But no, they just want people to complete the story before anything else.

I think.