Rockstar’s Next Game Won’t Take 8 Years, as GTA 6 Tools Allow Team to “Do Things More Quickly”

"We foundationally changed a lot of stuff on this project. But now it’s done, and we’re not going to rip it apart," says Aaron Garbut.

Posted By | On 14th, Oct. 2026

Grand Theft Auto 6_Ultimate Edition (2)

It’s no secret that Grand Theft Auto 6 is coming after an agonizingly long gap (13 years after its predecessor and eight years after Red Dead Redemption 2). Many have come to expect as much from Rockstar Games, but in Bloomberg’s new story inside the game’s development, the developer told Jason Schreier that the wait for the next game won’t be as long.

“The engine, the tools and the team we’ve built during this project will allow us to do things more quickly,” said technical director Phil Hooker. “I feel confident that we can build on top of this and go more sideways than upwards to build more compelling content.”

Rockstar North co-studio head Aaron Garbut added, “We foundationally changed a lot of stuff on this project. But now it’s done, and we’re not going to rip it apart.” Schreier noted the jump from GTA 3 to GTA: Vice City and how the latter released so quickly because it leveraged existing work on the former. The same could be said for GTA: San Andreas, though its larger scale, including three cities for players to explore, led to two years of development. Which is still impressive given the sheer volume of content.

Grand Theft Auto 6 launches on November 19th for Xbox Series X/S and PS5. By all accounts, it’s Rockstar’s largest game yet, with a world that’s almost three times the playable space of Red Dead Redemption 2 and a story that could take about 80 hours to complete. Check out all the latest details here.

But while it’s on track for release next month on consoles, Rockstar seemingly has a PC version. A recent report from GamesBeat claims the port will launch in the first three months of 2027.


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