Rockstar says its next game after GTA 6 won't take another eight years
Rockstar North's Phil Hooker (director of technology) and Aaron Garbut (art director) told Bloomberg in an interview published October 14, 2026 that the engine, tools and team built for GTA 6 will shorten the studio's next project: \"I feel confident that we can build on top of this and go more sideways than upwards,\" Hooker said. The promise is measurable because Rockstar's last two major releas
The short answer
Rockstar's next game after GTA 6 should not take another eight years to make, according to the studio's own senior staff. Phil Hooker, director of technology at Rockstar North, and Aaron Garbut, the studio's art director and co-president, made that case in a Bloomberg interview by Jason Schreier published on October 14, 2026, relayed the same day by VGC and RockstarINTEL. No title, no window and no release date have been announced for that next project.
What Hooker and Garbut actually said
"The engine, the tools and the team we've built during this project will allow us to do things more quickly," Hooker told Bloomberg. "I feel confident that we can build on top of this and go more sideways than upwards to build more compelling content." Garbut gave a blunter version of the same argument: "We foundationally changed a lot of stuff on this project. But now it's done, and we're not going to rip it apart."
The wording matters because it is about infrastructure rather than ambition. VGC and RockstarINTEL published the same sentences on October 14, 2026, which is a useful cross-check: two independent outlets quoting identical quotes from one Bloomberg interview, rather than paraphrasing a press release neither has seen. Garbut also told Bloomberg that "the last 30 years has been practice for where we got to here," crediting a team that has stayed together for decades.
The arithmetic behind the promise
The claim becomes concrete with dates. Rockstar's previous major single-player release was Red Dead Redemption 2, which launched on PS4 and Xbox One on October 26, 2018 — VGC describes it as the studio's last major new single-player release before GTA 6. With GTA 6 on November 19, 2026, that gap is 2,946 days, or eight years and 24 days. The eight-year framing used by Rockstar, VGC and RockstarINTEL measures the GTA 6 project itself, which began with a 2015 research trip to Miami.
Between numbered GTA games the wait is longer. GTA V shipped on September 17, 2013, and GTA VI arrives 4,811 days later — 13 years and two months, the longest interval between numbered entries in the series' history. Two delays explain part of it: the game moved from an original 2025 target to May 26, 2026, then another 177 days to November 19, 2026.
Why the GTA III → Vice City comparison is the interesting one
Bloomberg likens the situation to the jump from GTA III to Vice City, which launched about a year apart — October 2001 to October 2002 — because all the groundwork had been laid during the first game. RockstarINTEL goes further, writing that while "GTA 7 or Red Dead Redemption 3" will not follow within a year, a new IP or a returning classic "could come within 5 years or so." That five-year figure is RockstarINTEL's own projection, not a Rockstar statement, and should be read as a guess.
VGC is careful in the opposite direction, noting "there's certainly no suggestion, however, that Rockstar's next game will arrive anywhere near that soon." The defensible reading is a direction of travel — faster than eight years — rather than a timetable. For scale, the gap between GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 was 1,865 days, or five years and one month.
The staff number that explains the eight years
The most concrete explanation for the length of the GTA 6 cycle is headcount. Bloomberg reports that Rockstar employed 2,441 people when Red Dead Redemption 2 shipped in October 2018, against 4,711 staff across 12 offices as of August 2026 — a rise of 2,270 people, or 93%, in under eight years, figures relayed in French by Rockstar Actu. Rockstar North, which drove the number up, works out of the former offices of The Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh.
The same reporting explains why the schedule slipped rather than the game breaking. Rob Nelson told Bloomberg that internal projections for writing and animating GTA VI's non-player characters were "frightening," which led Rockstar to build a dedicated character team in Los Angeles. Hooker's justification was that the studio could have held the original calendar, but not with the game it wanted to ship.
What is confirmed, and what is not
Three things are on the record: the two Bloomberg quotes above, the staffing figures, and GTA 6's November 19, 2026 release date. Everything else about Rockstar's future output — genre, timing, whether the next project is a new IP or a sequel — is speculation, including the five-year framing. Rockstar has not announced any title beyond GTA 6.
One adjacent claim should be separated out. A report published October 13, 2026, citing four anonymous industry sources, said a PC version of GTA 6 is planned before the end of March 2027; Rockstar has never confirmed a PC release at all, and that date rests on unnamed sources rather than an announcement. Bloomberg also notes that Rockstar's developers are not yet discussing the online component of GTA 6, even though GTA Online still generates roughly $500 million a year for Take-Two by Rockstar Actu's reading of the same feature.
