Rockstar: Next Game After GTA 6 Won't Take 8 Years

Two of Rockstar's development leads say the next Rockstar game will not take another eight years. They said it to Bloomberg, in a long feature on the making of Grand Theft Auto VI that outlets were covering on 14 October. It is a statement about the studio's future. It says nothing about GTA 6's launch.

We are labelling this Reported. The quotes are Rockstar staff on the record, but we have not read Bloomberg's piece ourselves: we could not find a copy of it we are able to fetch. What follows comes from two outlets that did read it.

What the Rockstar leads said

The feature was written by Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, who visited Rockstar North and spoke to developers and executives. SVG's write-up, published on 14 October, quotes two people:

• Phil Hooker, a Rockstar development leader: "The engine, the tools, and the team we've built during this project will allow us to do things more quickly."
• Aaron Garbut, also a development leader: "We foundationally changed a lot of stuff on this project. But now it's done, and we're not going to rip it apart."

Save Point Gaming carries the same two quotes word for word, plus a line from Hooker that future work can go "more sideways than upwards". Two outlets giving the same sentences is why we trust the wording. It is not the same as reading the original.

What it means

The point is simple. Much of GTA 6's long production went into rebuilding the technology and tooling underneath the game. That work is done, and Rockstar says it keeps it. Hooker's argument is that the next project starts from a finished foundation instead of building one first.

Save Point Gaming says the Bloomberg piece compares this to the PlayStation 2 era, when Vice City followed GTA III by about a year because it reused an existing technical base. That is a comparison from the feature as the outlet describes it, not a promise of a similar gap this time.

The headline the press settled on is that the follow-up "won't take 8 years", as NME put it. Be careful with that phrase. Nobody has said how long the next game will take, what it is, or when it will be announced. "Not eight years" covers almost anything.

What else the coverage reports

SVG's summary adds context that is worth treating as background, since we only have it second-hand:

• The development cycle was among the longest in recent memory, and the game was delayed several times.
• Rockstar moved all of its developers onto Red Dead Redemption 2 until that game's 2018 release.
• GTA 6 reportedly lacked a clear vision until around 2022.
• Take-Two chief executive Strauss Zelnick was reportedly "flabbergasted" by the delays.

The Zelnick line is the one to hold loosest. It is a characterisation in a second-hand summary, not a quote we can attach to a document.

What it does not change for launch

Nothing in the reported material touches the date, platforms or contents of GTA 6. The release stays where Rockstar put it: rockstargames.com/VI still shows November 19, 2026 and the Pre-Order button. Our delay tracker holds the documents behind that date, and the countdown has the live number.

It also says nothing about PC. Reports of a PC version months after the console launch remain reports, and PC is still not on Rockstar's listing.

What to watch next

Take-Two reports its fiscal second quarter on 9 November, and our earnings preview lists what to check. Rockstar rarely discusses unannounced games, and the company has not named a successor project. If a studio executive says more about what comes after GTA 6, it will come from a primary source we can read, and we will mark it accordingly.

For everything that is actually confirmed about the game you can buy on 19 November, start with everything we know about GTA 6.