GTA 6 Was Once Planned Alongside Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar Says

Grand Theft Auto 6 may have arrived on a considerably earlier timeline if Rockstar Games had been able to follow its original production plan. The studio initially expected to work on the next Grand Theft Auto while also building Red Dead Redemption 2, but the enormous scope of the western ultimately made that approach impractical.

Comments from Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson provide a clearer picture of why the wait for GTA 6 became so long. The company determined that Red Dead Redemption 2 required a full-studio effort rather than a divided focus. GTA 6 was consequently pushed aside as the team concentrated its resources on completing the 2018 western sequel.

That decision delayed the formal push toward the next Grand Theft Auto, but it also appears to have shaped the game Rockstar is now making. Nelson explained that the work completed for Red Dead Redemption 2 would eventually benefit GTA 6. The two games are obviously very different in setting and tone, yet the technical and design foundations built during Red Dead's development have carried forward.

Red Dead Redemption 2 became Rockstar's priority

Rockstar's biggest projects have never been small undertakings, but Red Dead Redemption 2 became especially demanding. Its detailed open world, extensive narrative, character performances, environmental systems, and richly reactive population all reflected a production of exceptional ambition. Rather than trying to simultaneously drive a new Grand Theft Auto toward release, Rockstar concluded it needed to commit fully to Red Dead.

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For players, that choice helps explain the unusually wide gap between major Rockstar releases. Grand Theft Auto V launched in 2013, while Red Dead Redemption 2 followed in 2018. GTA 6's first public release window did not arrive until 2025, years after the western's debut. The game then received further delays.

Had the studio successfully advanced both projects in parallel, it is reasonable to think GTA 6 could have targeted the early years of the 2020s. That was never a public promise from Rockstar, and there is no way to know exactly what version of the game would have resulted. Still, the revelation makes clear that an earlier GTA 6 was at least part of the company's internal planning before Red Dead Redemption 2's needs overtook everything else.

The trade-off was not simply extra development time. It was an opportunity for Rockstar to take lessons from one landmark open-world game and apply them to another. GTA 6 reportedly carries over ideas and systems associated with Red Dead Redemption 2, including how players can interact with non-player characters. That lineage suggests GTA 6's long production was not merely spent waiting for a project to begin; it was also influenced by technology, workflows, and design experiments developed for Red Dead.

A delay that may have improved the final game

There is an understandable temptation to view any delay only as bad news, especially for a game as eagerly anticipated as GTA 6. Rockstar's own history complicates that view. Focusing its teams on Red Dead Redemption 2 meant GTA 6 took longer to enter full production, but it may also have prevented the company from shipping a less developed or less ambitious sequel.

Nelson's assessment that Red Dead's work would "pay off" in GTA 6 now seems particularly significant. Rockstar has repeatedly raised its own standard for open-world detail, and the company's games are judged not only by mission design or story but by how convincing their worlds feel between major plot moments. Red Dead Redemption 2 set a high bar for incidental encounters, animation, world simulation, and the sense that ordinary people in the world have routines and reactions.

Bringing comparable depth into a modern Grand Theft Auto setting is a substantial undertaking. A city built around vehicles, dense crowds, police response, businesses, social interactions, and player-driven chaos presents challenges different from those of the frontier. Reusing knowledge and underlying ideas does not mean simply copying Red Dead's systems into GTA 6. It means Rockstar had a tested base from which to adapt and expand.

That context also offers a more nuanced explanation for the extended wait. GTA 6 was not reportedly in uninterrupted, full-scale active development from immediately after GTA 5 released in 2013, despite long-running assumptions among fans. Planning and research began much earlier than the game's eventual full production, but the project was not moving at the same pace throughout that entire period.

Research began early, but the story took shape later

Various Rockstar teams and leaders had been researching and preparing ideas for GTA 6 as early as 2014. The studio's staff also made research trips to Florida during the middle and later years of the 2010s as they explored concepts for the new game. Those visits were part of the process of imagining the setting and building the creative direction that would eventually inform GTA 6.

Research, however, is very different from having a finished creative blueprint. The game reportedly did not have even a basic story framework until late 2019, more than a year after Red Dead Redemption 2 launched. And even after that point, Rockstar still needed time to determine the game's full identity and direction.

This distinction matters because it corrects two overly simple narratives. GTA 6 was not a project that suddenly appeared only after Red Dead Redemption 2 was done, since research and early planning were already underway years before then. At the same time, it was not steadily progressing as a fully formed game for more than a decade. Its path was more gradual: early concept work, a major shift in resources toward Red Dead, a later story foundation, and then the long process of scaling up development.

For a project of GTA 6's size, that evolution is not surprising. Open-world games need years of technical preparation before their final structure becomes clear. Rockstar also has to decide what systems can support a huge number of missions, activities, characters, and player behaviors without collapsing under their own complexity. The larger the game's ambitions, the more important it becomes to establish those foundations before trying to finish content at full speed.

Leadership backed extra time instead of forcing a launch

The game's public timeline has also involved more than one delay. Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive had already communicated the original 2025 release window when the first postponement was announced. Rockstar head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe later recalled needing to tell Take-Two chief executive Strauss Zelnick that more time was required again only months after that first delay.

Kolbe remembered Zelnick responding with disbelief, asking whether she was kidding and requesting that she tell him she was. But after the reasons were discussed, she said he understood the need for additional time. Her comments underline a production reality that is often lost in conversations about blockbuster delays: executives may want certainty, but a rushed launch can create consequences that last far longer than a revised release plan.

Kolbe emphasized that Rockstar had been fortunate not to face a simple demand to ship regardless of the game's condition. That kind of pressure can lead teams into the difficult position of releasing before major problems are resolved. Players have seen the result of that across the industry: games that require months or years of patches to reach the standard expected at launch.

There is no guarantee that more time eliminates every issue, particularly on a game of GTA 6's scale. But Rockstar's leadership is presenting the delays as a deliberate effort to avoid compromising the project rather than a sign that the game lacks direction. The studio's willingness to revise its schedule, backed by Take-Two's acceptance, may be one of the more important factors in determining how GTA 6 ultimately lands.

Why Rockstar expects the next project to move faster

Rockstar has also indicated that it does not expect every future game to require another wait on the same scale. GTA 6's development period included several major obstacles: the company doubled in size, productivity was disrupted during the pandemic, and the project endured multiple leaks. Each of those factors can create enormous complications for a studio working on a closely guarded, globally anticipated release.

The company has since made significant operational changes and believes those adjustments will provide a stronger foundation for whatever comes next. That does not mean Rockstar's next game will be announced soon, nor does it reveal what that game will be. It does suggest the studio sees GTA 6 as a turning point: a huge project made during a period of growth and disruption, but also one that has prompted changes intended to make future development more manageable.

As for the next project, Rockstar has not said. A third Red Dead Redemption is an obvious possibility, given the company's history of alternating between its two biggest series. Yet some fans would prefer to see a new property or the return of another Rockstar franchise instead. For now, that remains speculation.

What is clearer is how Rockstar reached this moment with GTA 6. The game was once envisioned as a parallel project beside Red Dead Redemption 2. Red Dead's escalating ambition made that impossible, delaying GTA 6 but potentially giving it access to years of valuable technology, ideas, and experience. For fans frustrated by the long wait, it is not a complete consolation. It is, however, a meaningful explanation for why the road to GTA 6 has been so much longer--and potentially more consequential--than it first appeared.