Rockstar Games has revealed that it originally intended to develop GTA 6 alongside Red Dead Redemption 2, meaning it probably would've come out much sooner than we ever realized.
As told in a new article from Bloomberg, Rockstar Games initially planned to develop Red Dead 2 and GTA 6 at the same time, but that quickly became infeasible. Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson recognized that the ambition behind Red Dead Redemption 2 meant they would need to treat it as an all-hands-on-deck situation, which also meant putting GTA 6 on the back burner. However, GTA 6 would benefit from this, as Nelson noted to Bloomberg that everything they built for Red Dead would "pay off" in GTA 6.
That appears to be true, as GTA 6 uses a lot of ideas and systems from Red Dead Redemption 2, including its NPC interaction system. It seems unlikely that GTA 6 would be what it is today if it had stayed the course and been developed in tandem with the western sequel. Unfortunately for fans, it means the game took much longer to make. Had it been developed simultaneously, it seems likely that Rockstar would've been able to release GTA 6 in the early 2020s.
Of course, the first release window that Rockstar ever actually publicly provided for GTA 6 was 2025. The game was delayed a couple of times, much to the bewilderment of Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two Interactive. Rockstar's head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe noted that she had to call Zelnick just months after announcing the game's first delay to inform him that they would need more time.
“I think he said, ‘You’re kidding. Please tell me you’re kidding,’” recalled Kolbe to Bloomberg. “But once we talked through why, he got it. And I think we are really lucky that he is as reasonable as he is, because a lot of people would say, ‘You’d just better figure out how to ship it.’ And we have been really, really lucky that we have not found ourselves in that place, because that happens to a lot of teams, and we’ve all played those games. It’s not great.”
Bloomberg's report dispels rumors that GTA 6 has been in active development since shortly after GTA 5 was released in 2013, but that doesn't mean Rockstar only began working on it after Red Dead 2's launch. Various teams and leadership within Rockstar have been researching and planning GTA 6 since as early as 2014. Rockstar has spoken at length in recent interviews about taking staff to Florida to research and dream up ideas for GTA 6 during the mid to late 2010s.
Bloomberg noted that the team didn't have a "skeleton" for GTA 6's story until the end of 2019, a year after Red Dead 2's release. Even then, it took a while before the team was able to fully wrap its head around what the game would be. Rockstar has vowed to not take nearly as long on its next game, thanks to the fact it seems to have fewer obstacles going forward.
Rockstar doubled in size during GTA 6's development, encountered multiple leaks, had a loss in productivity during the pandemic, and much more. The studio also made major changes to how it operates and expects that will set it up for success moving forward. What is Rockstar's next game? We don't know. Some may expect Red Dead 3, but other fans are hoping that Rockstar will break the cycle of alternating between Red Dead and GTA in favor of something new or reviving a different IP. Whatever the case is, don't expect it to take another eight years.