Grand Theft Auto 6 Will Come When It’s Ready
This past week, Rockstar Games tweeted out a very brief teaser for the next Grand Theft Auto online update. With this tweet came a trending topic that has since taken off in the worst way.
In 2013, Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto V to both critical and commercial success. To date, this is the highest-grossing piece of media in history, grossing upwards of $6 billion dollars on a budget of $265 million dollars (as of 2018). Most of this is due to both re-releases of the game from the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 version, to the upgraded PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC ports, to a soon to come PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S release.
“GTA 6” started trending after the teaser was tweeted. With this announcement came waves of disappointment from numerous people, all of which are clamoring for the next mainline installment in Rockstar’s legendary game series. Being that it’s been seven years since the game’s original release on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the demand for a new entry in the series is not unwarranted.
At the same time, however, fans need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
Since the second release of Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar has only released one brand new game, 2018’s massive Red Dead Redemption II. I would just like to stress that word, one more time: massive. Red Dead Redemption II was, for better or worse, an incredibly difficult undertaking by Rockstar Games. Over two thousand employees from all of Rockstar’s 9 studios helped assist with the development of the game. Twelve hundred voice actors were employed by Rockstar for the game, seven hundred of which had voice lines in the game. Suffice to say, it is extremely rare that a game of this size or scale actually comes to fruition.
So with that in mind, I have to ask: why are gamers not seeing the bigger picture as to why Grand Theft Auto 6 hasn’t been revealed yet?
With that question in mind, I would like to turn to this fan-made timeline of games published by Rockstar Games. This particular timeline gets posted and re-posted every few months on the popular internet forum Reddit.com, and every single time, the caption draws the same conclusions from gamers, a few of which I will point out here:
“Rockstar is too focused on Grand Theft Auto Online!”
“Rockstar/Take-Two are too focused on selling shark cards for GTA:O!”
“They’re just coasting on the massive success of GTA V!”
Sure, there can be an element of truth to these comments. Grand Theft Auto Online is an insane moneymaker for Rockstar/Take-Two Interactive. Quarterly reports of Take-Two’s earnings report that both Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online are among two of the highest earners for the publisher. Grand Theft Auto V is the highest-earning media title of all time. As of this writing, GTA V has sold a whopping 130 million copies and counting. It will continue to sell, especially with the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S editions set to release in 2021. So, yeah, Rockstar could be resting on their laurels as rabid fans may suggest.
However, when I look at the graph timeline, I am inclined to point out a few caveats. For starters, people tend to think of Rockstar Games as a monolith of sorts, pumping out all these games as one uniform studio. This simply is not the case. In the interest of time, I will focus primarily on two studios under Rockstar’s employ: Rockstar North, and Rockstar San Diego. Rockstar North is the primary studio under their employ. While they developed many a game under their former name, DMA Designs, they are more well known for creating the Grand Theft Auto series and have developed each game in the series, numbered entry or otherwise. Rockstar San Diego, on the other hand, has developed various games under the Rockstar umbrella, including the fan-favorite Midnight Dub series, as well as the more recent phenomenon, the Red Dead Redemption series.
With that in mind, I keep coming back to that graph. I see a company that used to put out a lot more games within a short window, that much is true. However, the scope of modern gaming has changed since the early 2000s. Open-world games are no longer held back in significant ways by limited hardware. As our hardware evolves, especially with the latest generation in gaming, games are going to get bigger and bigger. While the merits of game size can be argued, it is a fact that is indisputable. Red Dead Redemption II was a large and detailed game, which both excited and turned off players. For the next Grand Theft Auto game, you can expect the game world to be large, expansive, and packed with more detail than ever before. Things like that take time. Patience is a virtue when it comes to a studio known for pushing the envelope, and when the time comes, the wait will be very much worth it.
