The Earliest Reports
While we didn’t get any concrete details about GTA 6 until a report from Kotaku in 2020, there have been murmurings about GTA 6 for over a decade – before GTA 5 was even released. Between hypothetical comments from the newly-departed former president of Rockstar North, Leslie Benzies, in interviews with Digital Trends in 2012, and a TechRadar report in 2016 claiming that GTA 6 was in development, there’s been a quiet simmering of GTA 6 rumors in the background ever since the launch of Grand Theft Auto V.
Grand Theft Auto: The Complete Playlist
From humble 2D beginnings in 1996 to genre-defining, mega-blockbuster: here’s the entire playlist of GTA games and expansions so far. Log in to manage your GTA backlog.
First Details – The ‘Big’ Report
Thankfully, the worst part of the wait seemed to be over as more info about Grand Theft Auto 6 started to drop pretty quickly soon after. Our first concrete details of the sequel from outside of Rockstar were reported by Bloomberg in July 2022, five months after Rockstar’s official announcement.
This report seemed to confirm the altered scope of GTA 6, claiming that the game would start with one city, Miami, with more to be added later. But it also mentioned that map size may be traded for density, as this new entry contained more indoor locations than any GTA game previously.
The other big detail in the report was about its duo protagonists, a pair of bank robbers likened to Bonnie and Clyde. Not much was mentioned about the male protagonist, but the female was said to be Latina. If true, this would be the first female protagonist in a GTA game since the very first Grand Theft Auto, and the first female protagonist in a fully 3D GTA game created in the style we know today.
Catastrophe – The Leak
On Sunday, September 18th and two months after the Bloomberg report, a massive leak blew the development process of Grand Theft Auto 6 wide open. GTAForums user “teapotuberhacker” dropped 90 pieces of footage from the still unfinished project, including raw assets and even game code. These leaks covered everything from combat to enemy behaviors and even fully voiced conversations. And while many of the leaked materials have been scrubbed from the internet to the best of Take-Two Interactive’s ability, the leaks confirmed the earlier reports of the male and female protagonists, and the game’s setting, Miami.
GTA Online 2?
But what of GTA 6’s multiplayer? GTA Online has become its own entity separate from GTA 5, and is still going strong 10 years on. Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two, filed a patent in 2021 that focuses on NPC behavior and specifically mentions “virtual navigation and management of objects in a multiplayer network gaming community.” So this could have big implications for the future of multiplayer GTA. But the patent’s details also mention Xbox One and PS4 consoles, so this could have been just something they were implementing throughout their work on GTA Online.
GTA 6 Release Date and Platforms
Back in 2021, Tom Henderson reported rumors of a likely 2024 or 2025 release date, a window that was then corroborated by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, and VGC’s Andy Robinson on Twitter. A lot can change in two to three years of development, but in May of this year, Take-Two Interactive shared their projections for its fiscal year 2025, a period running from April of 2024 to March 2025. In those projections were some truly staggering numbers:
“In Fiscal 2025, we expect to enter this new era by launching several groundbreaking titles that we believe will set new standards in our industry and enable us to achieve over $8 billion in Net Bookings and over $1 billion in Adjusted Unrestricted Operating Cash Flow.”
What Is Your Favorite Grand Theft Auto Game?
- Grand Theft Auto 3
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
- Grand Theft Auto 4
- Grand Theft Auto 5
We’re Finally Getting GTA 6
It’s been a long road, but our first look at Grand Theft Auto 6 is almost here. We’ve been through every kind of news story imaginable, to studio restructuring, insane leaks, the departure of long-time studio heads, to even FBI Involvement in the investigation of cybercrime. And the craziest thing is that Rockstar hasn’t even called it GTA 6 yet. Only “the next Grand Theft Auto.” So they could really be cooking up anything!
But all these detours lead to the same place: the reveal trailer of what’s bound to be one of the biggest games of all time in early December.
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