Apple’s long-awaited Siri overhaul and Rockstar’s equally anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6) are two topics that I never thought would have an awful lot in common, but it turns out that in the year 2025, there’s one thing that unites most of TechRadar’s gadget and pop culture coverage: delays.
Whether it’s media facing production challenges, hardware battling interrupted supply chains, or software keeping pace with constantly evolving user behavior and expectations, we’re getting fairly used to disappointment. More often than not, what we’re marketed isn’t even what we receive, and there’s nothing worse than extended excitement for an ultimately overhyped result.
That’s not to say all delays are made equal, and I think in the case of both Siri 2.0 and GTA VI, that holds true. So, why are they delayed, and why does it matter?
This and more was discussed in the latest episode of the TechRadar podcast, where I was joined as always by Hamish Hector as well as phone experts Axel Metz and Phile Berne. Check out the full episode for all of our first impressions and hands-on testing.
Let’s talk timelines first.
GTA 6 was first announced in December 2023, initially setting a 2025 release window to series fans’ great excitement. Then, in May 2025, Rockstar Games announced its first delay, pushing back the release to May 2026, followed by a (hopefully) final postponement to its current release date of November 19, 2026.
On the other hand, Siri 2.0 was first announced as part of Apple’s 2024 WWDC presentation as part of the then-new Apple Intelligence suite, but didn’t arrive with the initial wave of tools when iOS 18 debuted in late 2024. Still, Siri 2.0 was made a major selling point for the iPhone 16 series, leading many to assume its imminent arrival unti Apple officially confirmed the delays to key Apple Intelligence features in March 2025. At WWDC in June 2025, Apple addressed the delay more directly, and as of right now, we’ve got no official confirmation of its release.
So, what’s with all the delays?
At the core of both of these issues lies a simple excuse: quality control. And, controversially, I think that should always be considered a good thing.
GTA 6 is arguably the most hotly anticipated game in living memory; the now much overplayed “we got XXX before GTA 6” jokes extend way back into the late 2010s, with fans speculating (and demanding) another sequel for years before the official announcement. That level of pressure is almost insurmountable – and I’m almost certain even then, the results won’t please everyone – but I can absolutely understand that the team behind the game will want to do everything in their power to release as crowd-pleasing a game as possible.
Conversely, Apple’s road to Siri 2.0 is slightly more complex. While I can’t condone Siri 2.0 being used in any capacity to promote a device supporting it before the company had absolute certainty of its readiness, that ship has now sailed and we exist in a space where Apple is being much more conservative with its Siri 2.0 messaging outside of that “it’s coming” and it was a bigger undertaking than they’d initially bargained for. Official information is, therefore, scarce; but rumor has it that Siri 2.0 will be delivered, initially at least, with Google’s Gemini smarts behind it.
While there’s no confirmation on this, the alleged deal would see Apple pay $1 billion a year to use Google’s 1.2 trillion parameter artificial intelligence model vs. Apple’s own 150 million parameters. Now that might all sound like a lot of nothing speak, what it will translate to is a vastly improved user experience with a far higher success rate than whatever Apple has been trying to muster up using its far smaller dataset.
All of this is to say, I think we should actively encourage quality control-related delays. It’s always going to be disappointing, but you’ll never be happier eating an underbaked cake than you would letting it cook for another 15-20 minutes.
In terms of what I think will release first, Apple’s Siri 2.0 has my vote, because GTA 6 might not be out of the woods just yet in terms of its release date woes.
Watch the full podcast episode above to find out more about the latest and greatest in tech, and who it’s best for!
