zelnick says rockstar's next game probably won't take as long as GTA 6

So Strauss Zelnick apparently spoke up about Rockstar's development timelines and had some interesting things to say about why the next project after GTA 6 might not be another decade-long wait.

Look, we all know the journey to get here has been brutal. GTA 6 has been in development forever — from that massive leak in 2022 to the first trailer dropping in late 2023, to finally getting a November 2026 release date. It's been a marathon. But Zelnick is suggesting that Rockstar's pipeline could be more efficient going forward.

Which honestly makes sense when you think about it. A huge chunk of GTA 6's development was building an entirely new version of RAGE, creating the state of Leonida from scratch, and figuring out how to make a dual-protagonist story work with Lucia and Jason. That's foundational stuff that future games can build on top of instead of starting from zero.

Plus, Rockstar has been expanding their studio network over the past few years. More teams, more resources, potentially faster turnaround. The gap between GTA V and GTA 6 was unusually long even by Rockstar standards — partly because of GTAO's unexpected success keeping everyone busy, partly because of the tech overhaul.

The next game standing on the shoulders of everything GTA 6 built technically? That could actually mean a reasonable wait for once.

Obviously we're still months away from even playing GTA 6, so speculating about what comes after feels a little wild. But it's nice to hear that Rockstar might not disappear into the void for another 8-10 years after launch.

Do you think Rockstar can actually speed up their development cycle, or is the long wait just part of their DNA at this point?

Source: Dexerto · Curated content.

I'm cautiously optimistic here. The RAGE engine overhaul and building Leonida from scratch ate years — if that foundation carries forward, yeah, the next game has a huge head start technically. But I also wonder if that just means they'll push harder on complexity instead of shipping sooner. Like, now that the engine can handle dual protagonists seamlessly, will they try three? Four?

That foundational stuff that future games can build on

This is the key bit. If Rockstar actually lets the next project iterate on what exists rather than reinventing every wheel, we might see faster turnaround. But "might" is doing heavy lifting in that sentence.

Glitchtester raises the real fear — give Rockstar a more capable engine and they'll just chase bigger scope. But here's the thing: RDR2 built on GTA V's RAGE and still took forever because they obsessed over horse testicle physics and 300,000 unique animation assets. The bottleneck isn't always the tech.

What could actually speed things up is if GTA 6's mission design pipeline is more modular. Think about how GTA IV's three-point structure (setup, complication, payoff) refined across episodes carried into V. If Lucia and Jason's dual-protagonist system creates a reusable mission architecture, the next game's designers aren't starting from scratch narratively either.

But yeah, Zelnick's basically promising "trust me" before the current game is even out. Let's see if GTA 6 ships on time first.

Honestly, the biggest variable no one's mentioning is what GTA 6's online economy does to Rockstar's priorities. GTA V shipped in 2013 and we're still waiting on the next one partly because GTA Online printed money for a decade. Shark cards, GTA+, nightclub income, cayo perico cooldowns — that recurring revenue killed any urgency to ship something new.

Zelnick's basically promising "trust me" before the current game is even out

Exactly. If GTA 6 Online generates even half the per-hour profit GTAO did, Take-Two's board has zero incentive to rush the next project. The "faster pipeline" talk sounds great until you remember a studio that made billions on drip-fed content updates.