Rockstar Promises Next Games After GTA 6 Will Develop Faster

Rockstar Games has assured fans that whatever comes after Grand Theft Auto 6 will not take another eight years to produce. Studio leadership stated they are "confident" that the engine, tools, and dramatically expanded team built during GTA 6's lengthy development cycle will allow future projects to move at a significantly faster pace. In describing how that growth will benefit upcoming work, one executive noted the next project should "go more sideways than upwards," suggesting the foundational investment has already been made and future titles can build horizontally on top of it rather than constructing everything from the ground up again.

The pledge comes with a notable asterisk, however. Rock Paper Shotgun points out that similar promises of greater efficiency appeared to have been made following Red Dead Redemption 2, a game that itself required years of intensive development before GTA 6 then consumed another eight years of the studio's focus. Rockstar has more than doubled its workforce over the course of GTA 6's production, a scale of expansion that the company argues makes the comparison to previous cycles less relevant. Whether the studio can translate that investment into a genuinely shorter turnaround remains to be seen, but Rockstar appears committed to the message that the hard infrastructure work is now done.

Sources