Source: Official GTA 6 screenshot released with Bloomberg's cover story. Source: Rockstar Games.
What this means
- The 13-year wait finally has an official explanation: Red Dead Redemption 2 swallowed the whole studio, and the original game was far more ambitious than what ships.
- A faster follow-up means GTA fans may not face another decade-long gap after GTA 6 — GTA 7 could arrive sooner than anyone expects.
- The two-continent plan that was cut shows how much bigger GTA 6 once was — and how dense Vice City and Leonida had to become instead.
- Two brand-new official screenshots dropped with the story — a rare visual release from a studio that guards footage closely.
Key facts
- Published: October 14, 2026 (Bloomberg Businessweek cover feature, Jason Schreier)
- Codename: Project Americas — the early plan spanned large parts of North and South America
- Research began: 2015 Miami trip; workforce grew from 2,441 (2018) to 4,711 across 12 offices, per the report
- Next game: Rockstar says it won't take another eight years — engines and tools built for GTA 6 carry over
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has published an extensive making-of cover feature (Bloomberg Businessweek, October 14) built around interviews with Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson and head of development Phil Hooker — giving fans the clearest official explanation yet for why Grand Theft Auto VI took 13 years to make.
The biggest revelation is the project's original codename: Project Americas. Early plans aimed to span large swaths of both North and South America. That ambition was shelved so the entire company could finish Red Dead Redemption 2 — as RDR2's scale grew, Nelson concluded it needed all of Rockstar, pushing GTA 6 back several years. The first research trip happened back in 2015, when Nelson took staff to Miami to study the city that would become Vice City.
By the end of 2019 the skeleton of Jason and Lucia's story was in place, but pandemic-era remote work made the finer details harder, per the report. The feature also details the operation's scale — Rockstar's headcount reportedly grew from 2,441 in 2018 to 4,711 across 12 offices — and extreme realism touches, including a dynamic sweat system and a new LA office built largely to develop the game's NPCs.
Rockstar provided two brand-new official screenshots for the feature: Jason and Lucia covered in mud during off-road racing in Leonida, and a rear shot of a Pegassi Zorrusso on Ocean Drive at sunset with a police helicopter overhead.
On the future, Hooker says the studio does not expect players to face another eight-year gap before the next game — the engine, tools and team built for GTA 6 carry over. GTA VI still launches November 19, 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Sources
- RockstarINTEL — the 2 new official screenshots from the Bloomberg feature
- The Daily Game News — Project Americas plan and faster follow-up
- GameDaily — how GTA 6 became Rockstar's longest road trip
- NDTV Profit — development timeline and speeding up the next game
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported from on-the-record interviews with Rockstar executives; the story was corroborated by IGN, Polygon, GamesRadar, GameSpot, Eurogamer and PC Gamer.
