Is GTA 6 in development? Although Rockstar Games hasn’t officially confirmed that it’s working on another installment in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, there are plenty of reports and rumors suggesting it’s on the way.
Believe it or not, it’s been seven years since GTA 5 launched at the tail end of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 generation of consoles. That’s a long time ago, so we don’t think it’s impossible that GTA 6 is in the pipeline, especially after the remarkable and ongoing success of GTA 5.
With the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X fast approaching, we’re hoping that Rockstar might have something to reveal sometime soon, even if a GTA 6 release date is likely to be a while away.
Although we still don’t have an official confirmation and details are thin on the ground, that hasn’t stopped us gathering together the best pieces of gossip, rumor and fact for your perusing pleasure. Here’s everything we know so far about GTA 6.
[UPDATE: A recent job listing has pointed to a Rockstar game getting the VR treatment. Could it be a GTA title? Read on to find out more.]
Red Dead Redemption 2 has now been in the wild for nearly two years now and GTA 5 for nearly seven, which means we’re hoping a GTA 6 announcement isn’t far away – even though we’re likely to be waiting a while to play it.
Some rumors have suggested that we could see the next Grand Theft Auto announced this year, with a potential release in 2021. However, this seems highly unlikely. For a start, during the PS5 games reveal on June 11, Rockstar revealed its bringing an enhanced and expanded edition of GTA 5 to the next-gen console in 2021, suggesting that GTA 6 will be released sometime after that. In addition, Rockstar has been focused on getting Red Dead Online up and running – and GTA Online is still raking in the dough – which may have diverted attention, not to mention the delays potentially caused by Dan Houser’s departure from Rockstar and the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic.
At the more conservative end of the scale, reputable industry analyst Michael Pachter predicts the game’s actual release could be as far away as 2022. In an interview with Gaming Bolt, Pachter said that he thinks a 2020 announcement with a 2021 release would be the best case scenario, while a 2021 announcement with a 2022 release or later would be more likely.
But the most solid GTA 6 release date hint comes from publisher Take-Two Interactive’s marketing budget. Reported by VentureBeat, Take-Two’s 10-K SEC filing (which lays out financial plans for the next five years) shows that the company expects to spend $89 million on marketing between April 2023, and the end of March 2024 – that’s a huge spike and, as the report points out, more than half the marketing budget expected for any other fiscal year over the next decade.
This has led industry analyst Jeff Cohen to predict that this spike is because GTA 6 is expected to release within this period.
In a note to investors, included in VentureBeat’s report, Cohen pointed out that previous marketing budgets have predicted the releases of other big releases from Take-Two Interactive, including Red Dead Redemption 2.
If this prediction is correct then we would expect to see GTA 6 release sometime between April 2023 and March 2024. Originally this spike was expected to take place in the fiscal year 2023, however its been pushed back to 2024. If it is GTA 6 that has caused this spike, this would suggest that a delay has incurred – potentially due to Covid-19.
Take-Two Interactive has already revealed it has 93 “full game releases” planned for the next five years. During an earnings call (via GamesRadar), Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said that this line-up is the strongest in the company’s history. According to Slatoff, 63 of these games are “core gaming experiences”, 17 will be “mid-core or arcade” and 13 are casual games.
However, out of these 93 games, 21 will be exclusively mobile titles – with the other 72 landing on PC, consoles and streaming platforms. But, perhaps the most interesting stat from this meeting is that half of this games line-up are from existing IPs.
This has suggested that we could see GTA 6 in that five-year window, with the highly-anticipated next GTA falling into that “core gaming experiences” category. So a release date sometime in 2023 would definitely fall into that window.
This is all still speculation at the moment and this marketing budget increase could be due to another factor. Until Take-Two Interactive or Rockstar Games confirms GTA 6’s official release window, or makes an official GTA 6 announcement, we can only speculate about when GTA 6 is coming. Hopefully we won’t have much longer to wait.
The thing about Rockstar Games is that it’s an incredibly secretive games publisher. No GTA 6 trailer is getting out of that studio unless someone seriously screws up.
Just look at what Rockstar did with both GTA 5 and Red Read Redemption 2. It teased an announcement a few days before dropping the first trailer for either game.
If there’s a GTA 6 trailer, you’ll know about it because the internet will explode – and we’ll let you know too, of course. But we’re not expecting one anytime soon.
Below we’ve collected all of the latest leaks and rumors that hint at when GTA 6 might be launched – and what we can expect from the new game. As always, take these details with a pinch of salt – some are old, some are from now deleted sources and others might just be keen fans getting carried away.
The next step for GTA could be VR
GTA in VR? It could be on the cards if a recent posting on LinkedIn from an Australian development studio is anything to go by. In the post, Video Games Deluxe shared that it’s “now gearing up for a new project, a AAA open world title in VR for Rockstar. 2020 marks our 7th year of working exclusively for Rockstar in Sydney and we are excited to taking on this ground breaking project.”
The studio has history with Rockstar, having worked on the VR adaption of L.A. Noire for PC and PSVR so this doesn’t seem unlikely.
The question is what game will be getting the VR treatment. We can say right away we don’t think it’s likely that GTA 6 will be coming out of the gates in VR. An older title seems more likely and GTA 5 is the lead contender.
The game seems to be perpetually popular and an expanded and enhanced version has already been confirmed for PS5, which could mean PSVR 2 involvement.
The good news for GTA 6 hopefuls is that this project is with an entirely different studio so if GTA 6 is in development, this VR project isn’t likely to derail anything.
GTA Online will also continue on PS5, with additional content that’s exclusive to Sony’s new console. A standalone version of GTA Online will also be made available for free, exclusively for PlayStation 5 players during the first three months.
While this is welcome news for GTA 5 fans, it suggests we probably won’t see GTA 6 release until sometime after mid-2021.
This has led industry analyst Jeff Cohen to predict that this spike is because GTA 6 is expected to release within this period.
In a note to investors, included in VentureBeat’s report, Cohen pointed out that previous marketing budgets have predicted the releases of other big releases from Take-Two Interactive, including Red Dead Redemption 2.
“We are not sure how much we should be reading into this shift, but we would note that this disclosure accurately predicted the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2 prior to that game’s announcement,” the note reads. “Management has spoken very confidently about the pipeline over the next five years and existing live services execution has been excellent. However, the timing of the next Grand Theft Auto remains top-of-mind for investors, particularly with the stock near all-time-highs.”
If this prediction is correct then we would expect to see GTA 6 release sometime between April 2023 and March 2024. Originally this spike was expected to take place in the fiscal year 2023, however its been pushed back to 2024. If it is GTA 6 that has caused this spike, this would suggest that a delay has incurred – potentially due to Covid-19.
During anearnings call (via GamesRadar), Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said that this line-up is the strongest in the company’s history, but what can we expect? Well, according to Slatoff, 63 of these games are “core gaming experiences”, 17 will be “mid-core or arcade” and 13 are casual games.
However, out of these 93 games, 21 will be exclusively mobile titles – with the other 72 landing on PC, consoles and streaming platforms. But, perhaps the most interesting stat from this meeting is that half of this games line-up are from existing IPs. Suggesting we could be seeing GTA 6 in that five-year window, with the highly-anticipated next GTA falling into that “core gaming experiences” category.
“This is a larger pipeline than we’ve had before, we’ve been talking about this for quite some time. Our expectation is that we’d like to keep up this velocity,” Slatoff said. “It’s really important for us to build scale, and this is one way that we’re doing it. We need more at-bats.”
CEO Strauss Zelnick explained that the publisher plans to smooth out its financial results with “a handful or greater of new significant releases every year”. And it looks like the company believes it may have some big successes in the pipeline.
“With our strong catalog, with our live service offerings, and with our annual releases, we can have great strength, even in a light year, even though it’s not our goal to have a light year, and then do even better in the year when we’re able to launch a number of titles, which is our strategy, and even better than that if we’re fortunate enough to have a blockbuster title. And we have some of those as well,” Zelnick said.
Chris ‘Liberty93’ from Rockstar Mag (a French fan site) claims the story for Grand Theft Auto 6 was wrapped up prior to the departure of Rockstar’s head writer, Dan Houser, and that the next GTA entry will still have the “soul” of a typical Rockstar game.
Although a finished story might suggest a release date for GTA 6 is close, Chris did point out that many changes were made to Red Dead Redemption 2’s story during development, despite it being ‘completed’ way back in 2012.
“They still made changes in late 2017, early 2018, and many little details were modified,” Chris explained.
GTA 5 voice actor for the character Michael de Santa, Ned Luke, has been getting questions about the series’ next steps for a long time and he’s taken to Instagram Stories (via GameSpot) with Franklin Clinton voice actor, Shawn Fonteno, to tell fans to stop believing “clickbait” rumors and leaks, saying “if you hear it from Rockstar, then you know.”
The video has since disappeared from Instagram but was posted to Twitter:
@SWEGTA @BadgerGoodger Even the man himself said it. #GTA6 pic.twitter.com/NfgCqWSHEUApril 3, 2020
The report goes on to say that this new instalment is planned to be a “moderately sized release” (so, probably still pretty big) which will be “expanded with regular updates over time”. The hope is that this approach will lessen stress and crunch.
It’s worth noting, though, that the report emphasises that the game is still in the very early development stages so plans could quite easily change over time as the development process evolves.
The original poster also claimed that “Sony paid ‘huge money’ in order to secure a 1-month PS5 exclusive”. It’s possible GTA 6 will have PS5-exclusive launch content like Red Dead Redemption 2 did, but a one month timed exclusive release on PS5 seems a bit short.
The first piece of artwork is an android hugging a champagne bottle with the year 1998 on it (that’s Rockstar’s founding year) while the second is a red and blue logo with Rockstar’s various slogans on it.
Like we said, this isn’t much at all but any changes Rockstar makes tend to grab the attention of fans hoping for some kind of new game announcement. After all, the announcement of Red Dead Redemption 2 was preceded by a Twitter logo change so it’s not like subtlety like this would be off the cards.
Or this could simply be Rockstar updating its website with some interesting new evergreen imagery—the fact that the images are generally relevant to Rockstar as a company and that they appear in the background of the site’s menu suggests that they’re not hugely important. Until any kind of official announcement is made we won’t know for sure.
“Given that we’re a company that depends on our creative teams to make as close to perfect products as possible,” said Zelnick, “we have to be willing to live with the vagaries of product deliveries. And that means, sometimes, we will have thin frontline years.”
Houser, who has variously acted as writer, producer and voice actor at Rockstar, led Rockstar Games to become one of the biggest developers in the industry. It’s currently unknown whether this will have an impact on GTA 6’s development.
This doesn’t rule out the return of CJ as a character entirely (Rockstar could always cast someone else in the role) but it does confirm that Bellard isn’t involved and doesn’t intend to be if asked.
Rockstar hasn’t commented on rumors and we won’t know anything certain about any cast for GTA 6 until it speaks out.
Ogg’s reasoning, rather than any kind of inside knowledge as far as we can tell, is that Rockstar games “take 7-8 years to make, do the math.” Doing the math from GTA 5’s 2013 release date would mean that GTA 6 could release in 2020 or 2021, right in time for the next generation of consoles. That seems very soon for a game we’ve seen very little about but, hey, it’s not impossible. We’ll be watching this space.
The letter was to a Florida store asking permission for Rockstar Games to inspect the premises, presumably for use or inspiration in the forthcoming game – mentioning a location scout Leah Sokolowsky who hinted at a large digital media client in a podcast back in May 2019 (via Daily Star).
Regardless, it’s still fun to get our imaginations going for what the future of the Grand Theft Auto franchise may hold. According to the Reddit poster behind the leak, the game, known as Project Americas, has been in production since 2015 though it was placed on ice while Red Dead Redemption 2 was the focus. GTA 6 could be expansive, set across multiple decades (1970s to 1980s) and locations (one of which is Vice City, another Liberty City and another is a fictional city based on Rio de Janeiro).
The game will apparently deal with one playable protagonist named Ricardo and play through their story as a rising drug lord with heavy inspiration from Netflix’s Narcos series. The story will be told through chapters, with a heavy emphasis on the visuals of changes in time as the story progresses. While there’s no estimated release date given, the post says that the plan is to release the game for the next generation only.
While it’s unlikely that the whole report is true (even the poster says that the game’s pre-alpha status means things are likely to change) that’s not to say some elements are impossible. Certainly a next-gen only release seems entirely plausible. Before you get too excited,though, the post has already been debunked by Kotaku’s Jason Schreier.
A good rule of thumb is that if a video game leak is a giant list of incredible-sounding bullet points, it’s fake https://t.co/lWHFRv9xZk pic.twitter.com/o9SZWcQPuJ2 July 2019
According to the post, GTA 6 will allow players to travel between several big cities, including Liberty City and Vice City. The poster also claims you start off as a small-time drug runner before joining an infamous gang and kicking it with the big dogs.
In addition, the post claims Rockstar is waiting to see how the new-generation consoles sell as GTA 6 wouldn’t be able to be released on the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One due to memory restrictions. The anonymous poster also claimed GTA 6 will feature both major cities along with a vast stretch of highways and Blaine County-like countryside in the middle of it all.
Finally, the post claims that, despite the game being set in a timed era, there will be flashbacks between missions and Red Dead Redemption 2-type stranger dialogues that implement the greet/antagonise format.
While location rumors seem to be leaking in abundance, the anonymous Pastebin post has been backed up by review on Glassdoor by a Rockstar Games QA tester, which has since been removed (via Dexerto). Alongside reading out Rockstar for its institutionalized crunch, the post leaves a cryptic message that sees the first letter of each sentence spelling out ‘GTA6LSVCLC’. This may be pointing to the potential locations of Grand Theft Auto 6: Los Santos, Vice City, and Liberty City.
Wonder what these locations would look like together as an actual map? Graphic designer RealityDesign posted a concept image on GTA Forums, showing what this map could potentially look like. Check it out below:
The reason for this code name is apparently because players will be able to fly between the US and South America in the game, though the majority of the action will take place in the former. This in combination with the source’s assertion that the game will largely be set in Vice City (the Rockstar version of Miami) suggests there could be a focus on drug running which would draw on the popularity of shows and movies like Narcos and Tom Cruise’s Made in America. Particularly if Rockstar holds on to that 80s setting.
With no comment from Rockstar, these rumors remain nothing more than, well, rumors. But they do pose an interesting proposition that would seize upon the particular fondness many fans of the series have for Vice City.
“We don’t know what GTA 6 will be, but we’ve got some ideas,” said Benzies in the interview.
Okay, so it’s not much, but it’s certainly a snippet of solid information direct from the source. Benzies went on to talk about what kind of ideas get the creative juices flowing over at Rockstar.
“We’ve got about 45 years’ worth of ideas we want to do,” he added. “We’ll pick the right ones,” Benzies said. “It comes from the idea first. Where it is going to be set is the first question. That then defines the missions; you’re doing different things in LA than in New York or Miami. The map and story get worked up together, and the story is a basic flow of how it works out so you can layer the mission in.”
We’re just pleased that Rockstar has so many ideas for what it wants to do with GTA 6. We just hope it sorts them into some kind of organised system and gets that game to us sharpish.
Although there haven’t been any concrete reports as yet, every online titbit and juicy gossip morsel is pointing towards GTA 6’s map being absolutely massive. We’re even not talking city-size massive, we’re talking potentially the entire of the United States massive.
Some rumors are suggesting that GTA 6 may end up spanning the entirety of the US, with some kind of teleportation system that cuts down the journey time between cities.
There are even some incredibly exciting rumours that Rockstar Games might have a ‘70s theme up its sleeve, so crack out those old bell-bottoms and disco balls.
But there’s also another rumor that’s gathering strength, which would put GTA 6 a little closer to Rockstar Games’ British home – a London setting.
The reports actually started with a comment from Rockstar Games’ co-founder Dan Houser:
“At the moment, it feels like GTA’s DNA is contemporary-ish, American-ish, English-speaking-ish, because that’s what it has been… But that doesn’t necessarily limit it to those, that’s just what we’ve done so far.”
Rockstar Games sources suggest that London is the only non-US location to be whispered as a potential GTA setting.
For our money, we think a return to Vice City is on the cards, which would tie in to the rumors mentioned above. A recent report from The Know suggests that a return to Vice City in the 80s is actually in the works and that players will explore the rise in drugs at the time through the missions. In this rumored game, players will move between Vice City and South America, which would create a very interesting and entirely new kind of map.
The GTA 3 trilogy was set across three locations, Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas. This mirrored the original Grand Theft Auto Game, which was also set across the same three locations.
The most recent Grand Theft Auto games, GTA 4 and GTA 5, have so far been set in Liberty City and San Andreas respectively, meaning that Vice City is the only location yet to be explored by the recent games.
The only question now is whether Rockstar will be tempted to complete the set.
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