Rockstar says its next game after Grand Theft Auto 6 won’t take another eight years to make
The engine, tools and team built during GTA 6 will make the next project “go more sideways than upwards”
Rockstar says the next game it works on after Grand Theft Auto 6 won’t take another eight years to make.
When GTA 6 is released on November 19, it will be the studio’s first major new single-player release since Red Dead Redemption 2, which arrived on PS4 and Xbox One in October 2018.
Players may be worried that with games getting increasingly more expensive and time-consuming to make, and with Rockstar‘s trademark, attention to detail, it may be well into the 2030s before its next title arrives, whether that be a new Red Dead Redemption game or something else.
In a new interview with Bloomberg, however, studio heads Phil Hooker and Aaron Garbut say the wait for Rockstar’s next game won’t be as long as the wait for GTA 6.
According to the pair, the technology created for this game, as well as the team that was formed to work on it, will carry over to the next project, which should reduce development time.
“The engine, the tools and the team we’ve built during this project will allow us to do things more quickly,” Hooker said. “I feel confident that we can build on top of this and go more sideways than upwards to build more compelling content.”
Garbut added: “We foundationally changed a lot of stuff on this project. But now it’s done, and we’re not going to rip it apart.”
The publication likens this to the release of Grand Theft Auto Vice City, which was released just one year after Grand Theft Auto 3 because all the groundwork had been laid while developing that game. There’s certainly no suggestion, however, that Rockstar’s next game will arrive anywhere near that soon.
Elsewhere in the interview, Garbut said GTA 6 will be the culmination of everything Rockstar has learned up to this point, including staff who have been at the studio for decades.
“The last 30 years has been practice for where we got to here,”, he explained. “The team and us as individuals have been doing it for so long that there’s a sort of shared understanding, shared knowledge and a sort of shortcut to questions.”
Earlier this week it was reported that Rockstar is planning to release the PC version of Grand Theft Auto 6 at some time before the end of March 2027.
GamesBeat cited four separate industry sources, all of whom are said to be familiar with Rockstar‘s plans but all of whom requested to be kept anonymous to avoid damaging their relationship with the studio. Rockstar has yet to officially confirm a PC version.
