GTA 6 Development: Has Grand Theft Auto 6 Been In Pre-Production Since 2014?

Has GTA 6 been in development longer than we thought? Recent stories suggest that the latest Grand Theft Auto title is only in "early development", meaning it has been worked on for very long.

But some new insight could give us an indication that it has been a lot longer than that.

Let's look at the new evidence and see why that may be different.

GTA 6 In Development Since 2014?

In a now-deleted Reddit post, Chris Liberty revealed via a livestream that the next GTA game has been in pre-production since 2014.

This is interesting for a few reasons, the first of which is that it would seem contradictory to the statement that the next game is in "early development". To have a 6-year pre-production seems far too long to only just start development itself.

Rockstar Games traditionally focus on just ONE title at a time, meaning that they were working on both Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA 6 at the same time.

This could have been what influenced part of the "crunch" employees saw with the release of RDR2.

It could also mean that we're so far from GTA 6 due to the overwhelming amount of development that RDR2 required.

It wouldn't be a surprise to see Rockstar Games learn from the error of their past. With GTA 5 the developers opted to launch the game on the older generation before the new one came in; then delaying the publishing on the next generation for a year; not to mention that GTA Online didn't come until a month after it's initial launch.

Perhaps Rockstar Games have tactically played this to wait for the new consoles and focus their efforts on creating a game that can utilise the new technology AND avoids a split fanbase.