GTA 6 release date prediction, rumors, & latest news

Fans have been circling in the GTA 6 rumor mill for years now. Well despite the never-ending speculation, the game has been officially announced. Rockstar Games stated that their goal for every new project was to take it significantly beyond what it was previously, which makes a lot of sense. Rockstar also stated back in February 2022 that active development for the new GTA game was already underway.

Grand Theft Auto 5 has been a mighty cash cow for Rockstar over the last decade, with over 150 million copies of GTA 5 selling worldwide. It originally launched back in 2013 for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, before getting an updated release on Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

The huge success of GTA 5 paired with Rockstar Games’ ambitious plans for the next game is truly mouth-watering stuff. We are going to be making some GTA 6 release date predictions, while also following rumors surrounding the location of the next GTA, and other development leaks along the way.

GTA 6 release date prediction: it could be years away

The project at hand is undoubtedly mammoth for the development team, with every new GTA edition often being miles above its predecessors (except Vice City of course which remains one of the best to this day).

While there is no official release date and everyone’s previous attempts to guess the launch coming up way short, it is tough to put an actual number on it. Fans have been waiting for news since the release of Red Dead Redemption 2, but it could be much longer before Rockstar even hints towards an official date.

Going purely off past rumors we could have to wait until 2024 at the earliest for the release of GTA 6. The date seems to align with SEC filing where Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two, claims they are planning on spending a lot more on advertising during 2024. Not really a lot to go off but it would make a lot of sense.

If we look at the schedule of the release for the mainline GTA games, particularly looking at the 3D era since the release of GTA3, the timeline looks like this:

2001: Grand Theft Auto III
2002: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
2004: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
2008: Grand Theft Auto IV
2013: Grand Theft Auto V

How far into development is GTA 6?

We know precious little about what is going on behind the scenes at Rockstar North, or exactly how far along progress is on developing GTA6.

There was this report from Kotaku earlier in the year, primarily focussing on working conditions and staff practices at Rockstar. The report highlighted improvements that Rockstar has made to better take care of their staff, to avoid excessive periods of crunch as game release dates approach, and to give their staff a better work/life balance. This change in management approach is also possibly going to change the nature of how Rockstar approach releases for games like GTA6:

“One plan that management has laid out for the next game, a new entry in the Grand Theft Auto series, is to start out with a moderately sized release (which, by Rockstar’s standards, would still be a large game) that is then expanded with regular updates over time, which may help mitigate stress and crunch.

But there’s a catch: Rockstar’s next big project is still early in development. When production ramps up and the game gets closer to launching, will overtime come with it? Will Rockstar’s employees then face the pressure of months of crunch in order to finish all of the ambitious work it takes to make a Rockstar game? “The changes have been good enough for me to stay and give them a chance but let’s see what happens down the road when the pressures of delivering a final product become reality,” said one developer.””

We could perhaps see Rockstar adopting some version of the early access model for GTA. It’s hard to imagine exactly how they would schedule that out. Could they perhaps launch with one set of locations, and put out free updates that expand the world on a regular basis? Could they perhaps first release a multiplayer version of GTA6, later updating it with a traditional single-player narrative campaign? Any of these approaches would potentially suit the series, and as long as the day one version of the game was still a compelling and reasonably expansive experience, it’s likely that players would happily jump in even to a partially finished game. This would be a radical departure from the traditional mode that Rockstar has used for GTA in the past, but it’s certainly not impossible to imagine. We all want to play GTA as soon as possible, but it’s going to be easier to enjoy if we know that Rockstar has altered its approach to organizational management to better take care of its staff.

Many of you have been asking about a new entry in the Grand Theft Auto series.

With every new project, our goal is always to significantly move beyond what we've previously delivered. We're pleased to confirm that active development for the next entry in the series is underway.

— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) February 4, 2022

Beyond, and perhaps even related to, these structural changes, we’ve also seen some high-profile personnel changes at Rockstar. Key figures from Rockstar have left the studio, including the departure of Rockstar founder Dan Houser, producer on every mainline GTA since GTA3, Leslie Benzies, and writer and voice of Radio DJ Lazlow Jones, Jeffrey Crawford Jones. Whether these individuals simply felt it was time to move on, whether their working style wasn’t compatible for the change in company culture Rockstar had embarked on, we don’t really know for sure. There is still plenty of other staff from earlier games at the studio, and these departures have potentially paved the way for fresh blood to take control of the series. It’s going to be interesting to see how these personnel changes impact the end product.

Where will GTA 6 potentially be set?

The biggest hype around any upcoming GTA game is its location. One of the more exciting rumors was the game being set across America as a whole – that’s right all states in one game. A game that includes the whole of the USA could suit every GTA fan as Los Santos, San Andreas, Liberty City, and Vice City would surely feature.

There is always talk of a British-themed map with London often taking the bookie’s favorites if it was to feature. This rumor never seems to be more than just that, even though the game has strong ties to the UK.

A return to Vice City would be superb, another setting in the rumor mill with possible missions to South America? Perhaps Rockstar couldn’t resist the beautiful coincidence of the Romal Numeral for 6 being VI, and having GTA VI function as a reboot of Vice City. I can picture a title screen or a trailer with GTA VI appearing on screen, only to have the rest of the letters for VICE CITY appearing in neon.

What time period could GTA 6 be set?

GTA has explored a variety of different time periods throughout the years and has itself been around for over 20 years. We’ve seen them stick to a roughly present-day setting, explore near-future timelines, and explore period settings.

There was GTA Vice City which used a 1980s setting and is beloved for its fashion, cars, and music from that time period. GTA: Vice City came out back in 2002, and 2002 itself would now be an appropriately retro period setting.

It’s anyone’s guess exactly what approach Rockstar will take. With everything that’s going on in the world today, they might think that returning to a period setting might be what the world needs now. 90s nostalgia is at its peak, and early 2000s nostalgia is starting to set in too. Maybe Rockstar would find inspiration in that kind of time period.