Why Do Rockstar’s Titles Take So Long to Release?

When it comes to sheer quality, there are few names in the games industry that command the sort of respect – and on a consistent basis – that Rockstar Games does. Over the course of more than two decades, this is a company that has time and again delivered genre defining landmark games, from multiple Grand Theft Auto games to Red Dead Redemption and its sequel to even the likes of Bully and the Midnight Club series, Rockstar’s track record with the critical reception and, of course, commercial success of its games is unmatched by almost anyone else. 

If there is one issue that more than a few have raised in pretty much any and all discussions related to Rockstar, it’s that the frequency with which the developer has put out games has gone down drastically, which is something that’s become truer with time. Consider the fact, for instance, that by the time Grand Theft Auto 6 releases next fall, it will have been seven years since Red Dead Redemption 2 was released, which itself came out a whole five years after Grand Theft Auto 5. Between 2013 and 2025, over the course of a dozen years, Rockstar will have put out just three main titles, and that’s assuming that Grand Theft Auto 6 does not get delayed.

Compare this to the company’s output in previous years. During the Xbox 360 years, for instance, we saw Grand Theft Auto 4, its many expansions, Grand Theft Auto 5, Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, L.A. Noire, and Max Payne 3. In addition to all of these console titles, the company also put out games such as Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty Stories, and others on the side. That’s an insane amount of games over the course of less than a decade, and the overwhelming majority of those games were at least really damn good, if not outright stellar.

Looking at that list of games also sheds light on the fact that Rockstar has heavily trimmed down its portfolio. Where previously the company was putting out al manner of different games in different genres and on different platforms, now, if Rockstar isn’t making Grand Theft Auto, it’s making Red Dead Redemption, and it’s only doing so on the most premium of machines. Not only has the company heavily cut down on the number of games it’s putting out, it’s also leaned down its output to only focus on the biggest of the big hitters, variety and all be damned.

There are, of course, legitimate reasons for why that has happened. The first that instantly jumps to mind is Grand Theft Auto Online. The online component started out as little more than a multiplayer addendum to GTA 5, but over the years, it turned into a juggernaut without parallel. Thanks to GTA Online, GTA 5 has surpassed a whopping 200 million units sold, and continues to rake in just a stupid amount of money for Rockstar and parent company Take-Two Interactive through microtransactions. Even for a historically successful and influential company like Rockstar, GTA Online has brought unprecedented success.

Given the sort of money that it rakes in, then, it’s no surprise that so much of Rockstar has been focused on GTA Online. Is it single handedly responsible for Rockstar no longer working on smaller, more experimental games? Maybe not- but there’s no doubt that Rockstar would not want to take people working on GTA Online off the game so that they could work on, say, a Midnight Club or a handheld game instead. On top of that, it’s also heavily responsible for the complete and total lack of single player DLC put out by Rockstar over the last decade or so. Neither GTA 5 nor Red Dead Redemption 2 got single player expansions, even though both of their predecessors got incredible ones, and it’s fair to say that the work that Rockstar was doing on both of their online components had a significant role to play in that (even though Red Dead 2’s online wasn’t nearly as successful as GTA Online continues to be even now).

But of course, GTA Online is not the only reason for the significant decrease in frequency of Rockstar releases. If you’ve been paying attention to the games industry in recent years, you know that development costs and timelines have ballooned to a ridiculous degree. Even a regular AAA game in today’s day and age requires anywhere between 4-6 years to develop on average. Consider, however, the size, scale, ridiculous attention to detail, and level of quality that a flagship Rockstar game boasts, and even the average AAA development timeline starts looking inadequate.

Rockstar is, admittedly, a much larger company even than some of the largest AAA studios around. With multiple thousands of employees, not to mention the kind of financial backing that few other studios in the industry can match, Rockstar can throw more resources at its games and over a longer period of time than even some of the most prominent publishers out there. Even with that, however, it’s not surprising that games like Grand Theft Auto 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2 are taking as long as they are to make, because that level of fidelity and quality across that ridiculous scale simply cannot be achieved any other way. That obviously has a human cost, too, and Rockstar has, of course, attracted controversy over issues related to crunch and overworked employees more than a few times over the years- though thankfully, that’s an area where Rockstar has reportedly taken steps to make legitimate improvements.

This, of course, is not in Rockstar’s control. If it is to make the sort of industry-shaking Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto titles that it wants to make, Rockstar is going to need a bucketload of money and several years to make them- and let’s face it, at this point, anything coming from Rockstar that doesn’t touch a certain level of quality is going to be met with a lot of pushback and resistance from the company’s fanbase.

Ultimately, Rockstar’s decisions are going to be driven primarily by what it deems to be the best use of its ample resources. Would we love to see the game easing up on fixation with Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption to maybe widen its portfolio again and also put out other titles in addition to its flagship release? Obviously we would, but there’s also no denying that doing so would require resources being diverted away from things that have made a ridiculous amount of money- which means it’s extremely unlikely that Rockstar is going to make that decision.

The constant revenue that GTA Online brings in allows Rockstar to take the time that it takes with its games, which is an incredibly unique position for the studio to be in, and though a hypothetical scenario where that revenue stream dries up would necessitate a rethinking of that strategy, for that revenue stream to dry up, Grand Theft Auto 6 and its online component would have to do poorly. And as things stand right now, it’s fair to say that that looks quite unlikely.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.