Rockstar Games has revealed that it originally intended to develop GTA 6 alongside Red Dead Redemption 2, meaning it probably would've come out much sooner than we ever realized.

As told in a new article from Bloomberg, Rockstar Games initially planned to develop Red Dead 2 and GTA 6 at the same time, but that quickly became infeasible. Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson recognized that the ambition behind Red Dead Redemption 2 meant they would need to treat it as an all-hands-on-deck situation, which also meant putting GTA 6 on the back burner. However, GTA 6 would benefit from this, as Nelson noted to Bloomberg that everything they built for Red Dead would "pay off" in GTA 6.

That appears to be true, as GTA 6 uses a lot of ideas and systems from Red Dead Redemption 2, including its NPC interaction system. It seems unlikely that GTA 6 would be what it is today if it had stayed the course and been developed in tandem with the western sequel. Unfortunately for fans, it means the game took much longer to make. Had it been developed simultaneously, it seems likely that Rockstar would've been able to release GTA 6 in the early 2020s.

Of course, the first release window that Rockstar ever actually publicly provided for GTA 6 was 2025. The game was delayed a couple of times, much to the bewilderment of Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two Interactive. Rockstar's head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe noted that she had to call Zelnick just months after announcing the game's first delay to inform him that they would need more time.

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