Here’s why the rumored 1 billion US Dollar developmental budget for Rockstar Games’ upcoming open world action game, Grand Theft Auto VI, doesn’t quite add up.
Confusion regarding Grand Theft Auto VI having a budget of 1 billion US Dollars made the rounds after IGN’s coverage of Take-Two’s recent financial report. The post mentioned that development cost so far for the upcoming open world action game is “estimated” to be over 1 billion US Dollars. However, where the estimate actually came from remains ambiguous. Was it derived from statistics shared by Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick? Or was it informed guesswork from analysts? The latter appears to be the case, as Zelnick made no relevant revelations in the company’s financial report.
As such, the estimated figure of 1 billion US Dollars should not be taken in the literal sense, as GTA VI’s developmental budget thus far may well be reasonably below it. It’s worth mentioning that Activision’s Call of Duty: Cold War had a massive budget of 700 million US Dollars, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see GTA VI having higher developmental costs. There’s no doubt that both the development and marketing for the next entry in the GTA series involves a considerable amount of money, but we won’t know the actual figure until we hear it from Take-Two.
In a recent video on his YouTube channel, David O’Reilly, former 3D Environment Artist at Rockstar Games, had revealed that development on GTA VI began in 2018. He mentioned that he began working on the upcoming open world action game in 2018 after the development of Red Dead Redemption 2 was wrapped up. He continued to work on the title until he left the company in 2023. As such, the game appears to have a total development time of at least 8 years by the time it is released.
GTA VI is set for release on May 26, 2026, for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
