GTA 6: Rockstar Says Its Next Game Won't Take Eight Years

Rockstar's three heads of development told Bloomberg that GTA 6's engine and tools will speed up future games. No next project has been announced.

Rockstar says its next game will not take another eight years to arrive. Its heads of development told Bloomberg, as reported by IGN, Neowin and SVG, that the engine, tools and team built for GTA 6 will let the studio move faster.

GTA 6 and the promise of a shorter wait

The feature was written by Jason Schreier, who spoke with developers and executives at Rockstar North about the studio's history, the delays of GTA 6 and what comes next. According to SVG's summary, the three co-heads of development agree that the work done on this project will be the foundation for what follows.

Phil Hooker said the engine, the tools and the team built during GTA 6 will let Rockstar do things more quickly, and that he is confident they can go "more sideways than upwards" to build more compelling content. Aaron Garbut added that a lot was changed at a foundational level on this project, but now it's done and they won't rip it apart.

IGN frames it with simple math: about eight years have passed since Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018, the last game Rockstar developed. How long GTA 6 has actually been in development has never been made public.

Why GTA 6 took so long, according to the report

Per SVG's account of the Bloomberg piece, Rockstar had every developer working on Red Dead Redemption 2 until its release. GTA 6 then lacked a clear vision until roughly 2022. On top of that came the heavy lifting of building new systems to match the game's ambitions, plus the delays that left Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick "flabbergasted".

One caveat: Rockstar is not promising a return to its early-2000s pace of nearly one release per year. The claim is only that another decade-long wait should not be necessary.

What comes after GTA 6: speculation only

Nothing has been announced about the next game. SVG notes that a Red Dead Redemption 2 follow-up is widely assumed, but there are no leaks or details about it. It also mentions rumors of a new Bully, which Rockstar has reportedly started and cancelled several times, and of L.A. Noire.

The L.A. Noire rumor rests on old forum leaks and on Rockstar's 2025 purchase of Video Games Deluxe, a studio with several original L.A. Noire developers, since renamed Rockstar Australia. None of this is confirmed; it is the outlet's speculation, built on low-reliability sources.

A note on sourcing: the Neowin text could not be read, so we only have its headline, which matches the rest. The quotes come from SVG's summary, not from our own reading of the original Bloomberg report.

What we still don't know

• What Rockstar's next project is and when it will be announced.
• What "not taking as long" means in concrete timelines.
• Whether the full Bloomberg feature offers more detail on how teams will be split after GTA 6.

In the meantime, you can keep exploring the map or the rest of our coverage on the blog.