When Rockstar released GTA 6’s first trailer in December 2023, the game looked like it was coming along well, but it wasn’t “fully formed” back then. That’s according to Rockstar North boss Rob Nelson, who said in an interview that the trailer’s song, Tom Petty’s “Love is a Long Road” was a “mission statement” for the developers to rally around to get the game finished.
“With the first trailer for this game, the Tom Petty song was a real sort of mission statement. You don’t have the game fully formed, you have an idea of what it’s going to be, but you really have to push hard to pull that together and so when this team is able to do that–and it’s definitely made with everything that you’ve got, but it’s the best of everything you’ve got at that point–it’s put together in such a way that it helps be a bit of a guiding light of what it needs to feel like,” he told Trois Couleurs.
Also in the interview, Nelson spoke about how one of the first things the developers did after deciding that GTA 6 would be set in Vice City AKA Miami was to travel there.
“We’ll go there. And just feel it, and go out and just drive around. Almost always on our own at very first, just a handful of people, and we’ll take a ton of pictures, and soak as much of it up as we can and see what speaks to us and start to talk about it and share ideas about what we want to incorporate,” he said.
GTA 6 is set for release on November 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. According to SensorTower’s data, the game has already sold 5 million copies via preorders, generating more than $500 million in revenue.
Rockstar is partnered with Sony for GTA 6, and part of that deal includes a GTA 6-themed DualSense controller. It goes on sale September 10 at 7 AM PT / 10 AM ET for $85.