A lengthy new report on Grand Theft Auto 6 confirms that Rockstar has been planning the game since at least 2015 and that Project Americas was indeed the original concept.
Although the last few years of waiting for GTA 6 have felt the most painful thanks to the multiple delays and long silences, at least we’ve known the highly anticipated game was on some kind of distant horizon. Until Rockstar finally confirmed the next game in the series was in development all the way back in 2022, leaks and reports were all we had to keep us fed.
The earliest information about GTA 6 claimed that it was internally referred to as Project Americas and was originally planned to feature both North and South America before focusing in on Leonida. It’s been a long time since that was reported, but it’s just been confirmed by Rockstar in a feature that reveals how long the game has really been in the works.
Yes, GTA 6 Was Originally Codenamed Project Americas
And Rockstar Has Been Cooking It Up For More Than A Decade
Earlier today, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier shared a report on GTA 6 that deep dives into its storied development, Rockstar’s future, and much more. One of the most interesting tidbits comes when Schreier reports that co-studio head Rob Nelson and other staff flew to Miami for their first research trip in 2015.
While it’s been reported that development on GTA 6 started in earnest in 2018, Bloomberg’s report reveals that it was being considered a few years before that. It also confirms Schreier’s earlier report that Rockstar’s original plan for the game was “Project Americas” and that it aimed to include parts of both North and South America.
The Project Americas report also suggested that new cities and locations would be added over time, but that remains to be seen for the final versions of GTA 6.
Rockstar aimed to develop the game concurrently with Red Dead Redemption 2, before realising it would need all hands on deck to finish that behemoth of a game. This resulted in GTA 6 being pushed back a few years, which explains why development properly started on the game in 2018, just as Red Dead Redemption 2 was being finished.
By the end of 2019, GTA 6’s leads had figured out the “skeletons of the story”, leaving the team with plenty of work to figure out the rest of the game, which it had somewhat done by 2022 when the team confirmed its existence. Of course, with how much work has gone into making GTA 6 so expansive, including opening whole new studios, it’s no surprise that it’s taken as long as it has.
