The next action-adventure game from the GTA franchise is expected to release in 2025, here's everything you need to know from mobile compatibility to maps.
The previous Grand Theft Auto game was almost inconceivably massive and entertaining. No wonder we’re so desperate for a GTA 6 release date. The game’s sales numbers are off the charts, too, and player numbers remain impressive years on from release. This is largely thanks to Rockstar’s excellent and consistent updates to GTA Online. So, naturally, we’re thinking hard about what’s coming next: GTA 6.
While Grand Theft Auto 6 hasn’t been announced yet we’re very much hoping for some GTA 6 news soon. Our insatiable appetite for biting satire and a good carjacking knows no bounds. We’ve rounded up all the latest GTA 6 rumours in one place with our suggestions for what we’d like to see, no matter what form the new Grand Theft Auto ends up taking. Below you’ll find everything we know about GTA 6.
GTA 6 RELEASE DATE:
When is GTA 6 coming out? If the series’ typical development timeline of about four to five years between entries is anything to go by, we should have got GTA 6 in 2018.
Although there hasn’t been any news for a while, especially as E3 as we know it didn’t go ahead last year, Take-Two Interactive has confirmed their attendance at this E3 2021, meaning we could hear more about a potential release date.
We do know that when stunt actor Tim Neff’s CV surfaced claiming he had credits on Grand Theft Auto 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2, it proved to be a fake. It should have been obvious, really: the CV didn’t match Neff’s IMDB page, it had spelling errors, and it wasn’t taken down immediately by Rockstar once the story was widely known.
When we asked Neff for details he said: “That isn’t my page, account or résumé. I don’t even know that website. I worked on GTA 5 a long time ago and haven’t done anything since. Sorry for the confusion. It seems I’m being trolled online really badly.”
It’s not the first time GTA 6 has appeared on someone’s CV, either. A 3D artist who briefly worked for Rockstar’s India branch included a GTA 6 mention on his resume before it was removed. According to Bibin Michael, he worked on creating concept vehicles matching the real world for GTA 5 and GTA 6. GTA Forums member ApolloThunder also noted Michael is credited in the thank you page for Red Dead Redemption 2, which backs up the claim he has worked with Rockstar in the past, at least.
GTA 6 NEWS:
Nowadays we tend to wait the best part of a decade between new games like GTA and Borderlands, but that might not necessarily be the case going forward. In an interview with gamesindustry.biz, Take-Two Interactive CEO, Strauss Zelnick, suggested that better development tools and bigger teams could shorten these gaps. It could also mean that such “games may be a bit shorter” while still being robustly supported post-launch.
To mitigate crunch time is another reason the next GTA could be shorter, as Kotaku says in its report, “One plan that management has laid out for the next game, a new entry in the Grand Theft Auto series, is to start out with a moderately sized release (which, by Rockstar’s standards, would still be a large game) that is then expanded with regular updates over time, which may help mitigate stress and crunch.” Rockstar employees are speaking out about the positive changes the company is making after it was scrutinised following the crunch time over Red Dead Redemption 2. Although there’s still no timeline on a GTA 6, it means the next GTA might be slightly smaller when it does release.
We might as well all go home now, actually: Grand Theft Auto 6 is already out on, er, PlayStation 2? Last year we noticed the iffy-looking GTA 6 box art above in a photo posted to Reddit from a bootleg stand in Brazil. Using our well-practised reporting nous, we detected that the box art might not quite be legit. Either that, or Rockstar is showing consoles from two generations back some unlikely love, and Summer Glau has made her live-action videogame debut.
Speaking of hoax GTA 6 announcements, another one cropped up in July 2018, courtesy of GTA Online. If you logged on to Rockstar’s enduringly successful multiplayer mode around that time you may have seen a message that read “GTA VI Coming 2019.” This message only appears on the GTA Online platforms that are most prone to hackers, so perhaps a particularly mischievous sort has worked out how to post on Rockstar’s announcement system. Besides this, there’s very little GTA 6 news around.
GTA 6 RUMOURS:
Since there’s been no official announcements, the internet has plenty of, at this time, unfounded rumours and speculation about GTA 6.
The most recent GTA 6 rumour, as featured on Reddit, indicated that news was coming during SuperBowl LV. Last year’s big game took place in Florida and there were references to GTA Vice City all over the place, most notably some broadcasters showing off posters with GTA Vice City’s fonts and styling. Fox Sports also had lots of graphical overlays on its broadcast, most notably the mini map and the health indicators.
The SuperBowl in 2021 took place in Florida, with The Weeknd headlining the halftime show. Fans had speculated that this is important because The Weeknd has been linked to GTA 6 before in a music video. However, this is just a user comment that was included in the video via a billboard from “Son of Cita” that reads “Dis was on GTA 6 trailer”. When the SuperBowl halftime show happened, there was no reported link to GTA 6.
GTA 6 STORY:
A GTA 6 story could take any shape. Across the Grand Theft Auto series, narratives have covered a broad spectrum of ideas and tones – from the cynical critique of capitalism portrayed in GTA 4, to the relatively light and humorous GTA 5.
We’re not aware of any specific GTA 6 story beats as yet. It remains to be seen if there will be multiple protagonists once again, but we would love to see GTA 6 herald the inclusion of the first female GTA protagonist. In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, Dan Houser explained why a woman wasn’t playable in GTA V, and how the team could make it happen in the future.
“We didn’t really think about it this time [of GTA V]. That’s not to say that we couldn’t or we wouldn’t. This character set is just what came to us: it wasn’t, ‘we’ve got X and Y so we need Z’, we weren’t trying to do it off a checklist – I don’t think that will ever give you something that’s believable or engaging.
“In the future, could we do a game with a lead female character? Of course. We just haven’t found the right game for it yet, but it’s one of the things that we always think about. It didn’t feel natural for this game but definitely for the right game in the future – with the right themes, it could be fantastic.”
We certainly agree. If Rockstar could imbue a female protagonist with its typically anarchic sense of humour, she could be one of PC gaming’s greats. And, since we got a three-pronged set of protagonists last time – a first for the series – why can’t we have a little more variety in our lead characters for GTA 6? Who knows, they could even be on the side of the law this time, like these GTA V modders.
GTA 6 MAP:
The rumour mill has been churning with talk of a London GTA 6 setting. But, while England’s big smoke is said to be the only non-US setting Rockstar would consider, Houser appeared to debunk this rumour in The Guardian’s interview with him. He said: “I think for us, my gut feeling is, GTA London was cool for the time, but games were more limited then. These days I think we would love to set a game in the UK, set in London, whatever, but I don’t know if it would be a GTA game.
“I think there are plenty of great stories we could tell about the UK, great environments to showcase, great gameplay mechanics that could have a UK bent to them – I just don’t think it would be a GTA necessarily.”
TechRadar, citing an unnamed insider source, asserts that Rockstar was considering Tokyo as a possible Grand Theft Auto setting around the time Vice City was in development. However, on top of the issues posed by setting the game outside of the US, the developer was also put off by the “problematic” road system. Rockstar already has a game set in Tokyo, of course – you can see more of it in the Midnight Club 2 video below.
Another persistent rumour is that the open-world game will not be restrained to a city, but would comprise the entirety of the US. Now, we don’t doubt that Rockstar has the ambition or the necessary dollars to make that happen, but it’d involve too much driving – and, therefore, not enough heisting – in our book.
There are multiple ways Rockstar could make this a reality for a GTA 6 map. First, GTA 6’s US could be a truncated version of the real-world country, as we found in The Crew 2’s gameplay. Or various cities in America could function as a quasi open world – like the connected, but separate playable environments in The Witcher 3, one of the best RPGs on PC.
GTA 6 GAMEPLAY:
If the rumour that a new game in the series could recreate the entirety of the US holds true, there will be a huge number of activities to choose from. But the surface area of a location is one thing, whether the GTA 6 gameplay is fun, is another.
Thankfully, then, Rockstar has a solid track record with delivering gameplay that keeps us coming back for more. If the side missions kept us from the main story after many hours into GTA 6’s predecessors, a gargantuan, full-sized US could keep us going forever.
What innovations could GTA 6 gameplay provide? Maybe we’ll see our new protagonist planning assassinations like we did heists in GTA V? Something like Rocksteady pioneered with Batman: Arkham Asylum in 2009, in which we channel our sleuthing abilities to catch our foes, ending with a classic Grand Theft Auto car chase?
In GTA V, the side activities ranged from daring bank jobs to wholesome rounds of golf and hunting down celebrities as paparazzi. The sheer popularity of meticulously planned co-op heists from GTA V surely means they’ll return to GTA 6 in some form, and we can’t wait to see what Rockstar conjures up.
GTA 6 TRAILER:
Since we don’t know if the game even exists yet, there’s no GTA 6 trailer footage to show off. However, we do have 4K gameplay of GTA V, which is the closest you’re going to get for now. Thankfully, Rockstar pushes technological boundaries with every GTA title, so we can only imagine how GTA 6 will look.
Ok, so we don’t know much about GTA 6 – trust us, we feel just as bad as you. In the meantime, enjoy our list of the best sandbox games on PC above.
Grand Theft Auto VI: Release date, Missions, Gameplay, Trailer, Genre, Publisher, ratings and review. - Published by The Beyond News (esports).