A New Cat Species Was Found Before GTA 6 Shipped
Scientists in Bolivia identified the first new wild cat species in over a century while Rockstar was still finishing Grand Theft Auto 6, and the timeline says everything you need to know.
Somewhere in the Bolivian Yungas, a spotted cat smaller than a housecat has been living its entire secret life, undiscovered by science, for exactly as long as Rockstar has been building a game that is, at this point, older than some of the people who will eventually play it.
The tilcayo tiger cat, formally Leopardus tilcayo, was disclosed this week in the journal Current Biology as the first new cat species documented in over a hundred years, as GameSpot reports. Co-author Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz told NBC News she found it essentially by accident while volunteering at a wildlife rehab facility near La Paz, mistaking it for a kitten before genetic testing revealed something no textbook had ever named. The animal had been brought in by a man who had been feeding it rice and eggs before he could no longer keep it, which is a small, strange, and rather touching origin story for a species that will now carry a scientific designation forever. Nobody yet knows how many remain in the wild.
The Joke Rockstar Cannot Outrun
Grand Theft Auto 6 has been in development since 2015, a span of time long enough that GameSpot has taken to cataloguing the sheer volume of gaming history that has occurred underneath it: Halo, once the flagship reason to own an Xbox at all, arriving on PlayStation; more than fifteen Call of Duty games shipped and largely forgotten; the entirety of Phil Spencer's run as Xbox CEO, promises and reorganizations included, completed and closed out before Rockstar had finished polishing a single game. One recalls, with some fondness, how confidently that platform's exclusivity used to be sold as a permanent feature rather than a phase awaiting the next earnings call.
This is the timeline that fed the "we got ___ before GTA VI" meme, and it has apparently reached the ears of the people it mocks. Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick, asked about it, offered the sort of measured acknowledgment executives give when a joke has stopped being deniable: "I've seen some of those." One imagines the tilcayo tiger cat will be added to the list by sundown.
Soon, Allegedly, for Real This Time
The wait does have an end date now. Grand Theft Auto 6 is scheduled for November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, though anyone hoping to hold a physical disc will be disappointed; the game ships digitally, and the only disc bearing its name will contain the soundtrack. That the site was recently teasing a possible marketing tie-in, as covered in Spotify Billboards Suggest a GTA 6 Marketing Tie-In Is Coming, at least suggests the promotional machinery is finally catching up to the calendar.
A new species of cat, discovered, documented, and named while a video game remained unfinished, is not an indictment of anything in particular. It is simply the kind of fact the universe supplies free of charge to anyone still counting the years.