Grand Theft Auto VI has been one of the video game industry’s most anticipated games for at least half the dozen years since Grand Theft Auto V first released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Rockstar has obviously had its next mainline entry on its mind for (at least) all 12 years since GTA V, but according to Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick, development on GTA VI only began “in earnest” in 2020.
In Zelnick’s opening statement for Take-Two’s latest earnings report for the fourth quarter of its 2025 fiscal year, he reveals that “Grand Theft Auto VI began development in earnest in 2020 following the massive success of Red Dead Redemption 2,” before going on to discuss how highly anticipated the game is and that the new trailer broke records again. During the Q/A portion of today’s presentation, while talking about the trailer’s traffic in response to a question, he said that Rockstar “broke the internet, again.“
Which is no surprise when you look at that trailer. It was incredibly impressive, and the fact that it took Rockstar six years of focused production time to achieve what we’ve seen so far is a testament to just how incredibly talented the developers and designers at Rockstar are.
Six years isn’t the total development time, though, as Zelnick’s specification that work began “in earnest” in 2020 implies that pre-production and earlier stages work was going on prior. It’s even possible that people at Rockstar moved to work on Grand Theft Auto VI days after Red Dead Redemption 2 launched, putting a more total estimate for GTA VI’s development time at eight years, at least.
With at least eight years of development behind it, and nearly 13 years of waiting (if it hits May 2026) for GTA fans, expectations for GTA VI feel higher than they’ve been for any game. Its closest comparison, you could argue, was Cyberpunk 2077, which is a release we’ll all never forget for very negative reasons. Let’s hope for a different outcome this time.
