Before “Grand Theft Auto 5,” a new title came out every couple of years. “GTA 3” came out in 2001, followed by “Vice City” in 2002, and then “San Andreas” in 2004. There was then a longer gap, with “GTA 4” coming out in 2008, but smaller titles came out in between, such as “Vice City Stories.”
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This then brought us up to “GTA 5” in 2013. You can see that as the years went on, it started to take a bit more time between each title’s release due to games getting larger and more complex, as well as Rockstar growing and taking on more big titles that take up resources and focus, like the “Red Dead Redemption” series. Still, going from five years to over 10 years to release a “GTA” game is a huge jump — and it’s one that gamers are conflicted about.
Rockstar has already announced that the PC port of the game may take years to come out after it’s launched on consoles in 2025. As a former Rockstar employee explained, even with a PC port, devs “want to make it the best it can be.” If a PC port takes that much time to smooth out before Rockstar believes it’s worthy of being released, it’s no surprise that the team isn’t willing to launch a game until it reaches its expectations, and a game as massive as “GTA 6” could take a while to get right. For example, “Red Dead Redemption 2” took Rockstar eight years, starting development just a few months after the first “Red Dead Redemption” was launched in 2010.
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“Red Dead Redemption 2” also took up a ton of Rockstar’s resources during development. Rockstar reportedly realized that it was too difficult to have various studios working on different projects, so it had all of its teams merge into one large unit of around 2,000 employees focused on “Red Dead Redemption 2.” With “Red Dead 2” as the focus of almost the entire development team, it’s clear why “Grand Theft Auto 6” may have taken the backseat.
Another setback was likely the pandemic. During that time period of about two to three years, many game studios and publishers saw game development getting delayed quite significantly. Teams had to learn how to work remotely, which took a lot of training and setup. There was also the pivot to next-gen consoles, with developers needing to take time to learn about new capabilities and specs.
