Rockstar Officially Comments on Its Next Game After GTA 6

Rockstar Games has spent more than a decade building on the success of Grand Theft Auto 5, with Red Dead Redemption 2 serving as the studio’s only other major new release in that time. Now, Grand Theft Auto 6 is preparing to bring players back to Vice City with a new story, a larger world, and the most ambitious version of Rockstar’s open-world formula yet. The wait has been long, but the studio believes the work behind GTA 6 could make future releases easier to develop.

The gap between Rockstar’s major releases has become increasingly difficult for fans to ignore. GTA 5 launched in 2013, followed by Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018, while GTA 6 has spent years in development ahead of its planned November 19 release date. Rockstar’s incredible games have grown more complex with each generation, but the technology and tools required to build them could also benefit whatever the studio develops next. After investing so much time in GTA 6, Rockstar’s leadership believes the next project will start from a stronger position.

Rockstar’s Eyes Are on GTA 6 and Its Next Game

Image via Rockstar Games
Image via Rockstar Games
Image via Rockstar Games

Rockstar co-heads of development Phil Hooker and Aaron Garbut (via an interview with Bloomberg) believe that the studio’s next game should not take another eight years to arrive, pointing to the technology and development teams established during GTA 6‘s years-long development. Hooker also expressed confidence that Rockstar could use this foundation to pursue new ideas without needing to make every subsequent game bigger than the last, specifically stating,

“The engine, the tools, and the team we’ve built during this project will allow us to do things more quickly.”

Find the odd one out before the timer hits zero.

“I feel confident that we can build on top of this and go more sideways than upwards to build more compelling content,” Hooker added. In other words, Rockstar’s next game might not be an even bigger open-world crime game, but something more adjacent, focused on a different experience thanks to existing technology. To be clear, however, Rockstar has not announced what its next game is or committed to any specific release window.

That said, there is a precedent for Rockstar building a new game on the foundation of an earlier release. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City arrived less than a year after Grand Theft Auto 3, reusing and expanding on work that had already been completed. Garbut acknowledged that GTA 6 required significant foundational changes, but suggested Rockstar would not need to dismantle that work once development was finished. “We foundationally changed a lot of stuff on this project,” Garbut said. “But now it’s done, and we’re not going to rip it apart.”

One of the foundational changes, for example, is how GTA 6 built its NPCs. Rockstar was able to found and fund an entire new studio during development to make sure its NPC tech met the team’s high expectations, and that studio is now established for whatever Rockstar does next. And that’s just one example of a foundational change that hopefully means the next Rockstar game after GTA 6 isn’t a decade away.