Wuxia-inspired action game Phantom Blade Zero is arguably one of the most anticipated games of 2026, but no game is as anticipated as Grand Theft Auto 6, as the many calendar shuffles to avoid November have shown. So it was particularly surprising to see Phantom Blade Zero given a release date during June’s State of Play showcase that moved it closer to Rockstar’s game than most are willing to get.
In fact, Phantom Blade Zero developer S-Game moved the release date back from its previously-announced 9th September date to 29th October. This puts it just three weeks away from GTA 6’s 19th November release date.
But ask the developers at S-Game how bothered they are about clashing with GTA 6, however, and they’d say they aren’t especially bothered at all. Speaking to PC Gamer, game director Qiwei “Soulframe” Liang said: “Many people may think we have some marketing strategy to move it from the overcrowded September, and some are very worried that it’s closer to November.” “We don’t think about any of this. We only think of the quality of the product itself.”
Liang said he doesn’t believe competition has much of an impact on the success of one’s work, adding that “only the product itself matters. So I would say 99 percent of the decision [was about] development.”
Phantom Blade Zero isn’t in the same genre as GTA 6, but the same is also true for the many other games trying to avoid it. Phantom Blade is a Soulslike action RPG with flashy melee combat, so it’s not competing with GTA there. Their worry, however, is that such an incredibly high profile release will suck all of the air out of the room as everyone clamours to talk about it and play it, and that nobody else will be noticed.
This is why the September-October release window suddenly has more game releases squashed next to each other than we may have ever seen during that period. As the release date announcements kept piling up at Summer Game Fest, it became clear that there’s a GTA 6-shaped black hole in the release calendar.
For the Phantom Blade Zero director, however, GTA 6 isn’t the boogyman we’ve perhaps come to see it as. “I have no idea, actually,” Liang said, when asked whether it was scary to release so close to GTA 6.
“What matters is how polished the game is, and if we have one or two extra months, we can fix more bugs, do more optimisations, so that we don’t need a huge day one patch.”
Of course, releasing so many games so close to each other presents its own and not dissimilar challenges. We’re already starting to see games get delayed to avoid the crowded period. This week the release date of first-person Soulslike Valor Mortis got pushed back, moving to 13th October from 24th September. And the previous date was only only announced the week prior to Summer Game Fest.
Looking ahead, Phantom Blade Zero is set to receive a dedicated PlayStation State of Play showcase later this summer, which will offer 15-20 minutes of new footage. The game officially arrives 29th October on PC and PS5.
