GTA 6 - Rockstar’s soundtrack and music director Tony Mesones posted an image of Miami Beach on his Instagram account with the caption.
Have GTA 6 Plans Changed Again?
If we didn't know any better, we'd say that Rockstar Games is trolling its fan base. The company is well aware that players have been waiting for Grand Theft Auto 6 ever since the release of Grand Theft Auto 5. That wait has been incredibly long, and recently we were told that we shouldn't expect it to end any time soon. GTA 5, the "current" version of the game, has been available since the end of 2013. That will soon be eight full years ago. Sometime close to the end of 2021, we'll see a new "enhanced" version of the game released for the new generation of consoles. When that happens, it will become the first game in history to survive three generations of console hardware.
The simple truth of the matter is that Rockstar doesn't need to make GTA 6 because it's still doing so well out of GTA 5. Millions of people still log in to play the online version of the game every day, with new content and new challenges released almost every week. That makes money for Rockstar, and we mean big money. GTA 5 has brought in more revenue than any other game in history. It made more than one billion dollars in 2020 alone, thus securing the curious achievement of having generated more profit than any book ever written. Some sources say it's even made more money than any movie in history. While it continues to generate such vast sums, Rockstar has little incentive to kill it off and replace it with something new.
With all of that in mind, it was no great surprise when sources close to the company announced last month that Grand Theft Auto 6 isn’t scheduled for release at any time in the next few years. The game is officially in development - and has been for some time - but 2025 was touted as the likely year of release by those close enough to the project to make the call. By that time, the game would be twelve years old. While most of the delay can be attributed to not wanting to call time on its predecessor, Rockstar has also made a conscious decision to slow things down when it comes to producing AAA games. Red Dead Redemption 2, with its utterly immersive game world and seemingly endless amounts of content, was an enormous strain on the company and caused morale and stress issues among employees. By taking a more relaxed pace with Grand Theft Auto 6, the company hopes to avoid a repeat of those issues. Fans were understandably disappointed by the news, but most of them were willing to accept it. However, within the past few days, there have been signs that the company might have had yet another change of heart.
There have been unconfirmed rumours for some time that GTA 6 will return to the familiar setting of “Vice City” - a fictional city based on Miami, USA. A few days ago, Rockstar’s soundtrack and music director Tony Mesones posted an image of Miami Beach on his Instagram account with the caption "who said it would be cold" and sent fans into overdrive. Thousands of people commented on the image to ask Mesones whether this was a tease for the next Grand Theft Auto game. Mesones - so far at least - has refused to confirm or deny the suggestion. This could be little more than a man on vacation sharing photos of his trip, but hardcore Grand Theft Auto fans are determined to see it as a hint about the game's setting. It might seem like a stretch, but there's a suspicion that Mesones would deny any connection to the game if he didn't intend for a connection to be made.
It's unlikely that such a senior member of the Rockstar crew would post such a thing without knowing how his audience would receive it. He's been with the company since 2011 and is well aware of how enthusiastic fans are and how much they read into anything posted by anyone who works for the company. It was Mesones who put together the soundtrack for Grand Theft Auto 5, just as he did for LA Noire and Red Dead Redemption 2. He's accustomed to the unusual levels of attention that come with such a role and is normally cautious with his social media output. If he or anyone else at Rockstar were unhappy with the amount of attention the photograph was getting, he'd post or be asked to post a clarification. That hasn't yet happened, and the photo has been online for more than 48 hours. Rockstar is either enjoying the attention and the hype, or this is indeed a tacit confirmation that Grand Theft Auto 6 is closer than we all realise. As if to seal the deal, Mesones has tagged Rockstar's official Instagram account in his post. That would be an odd thing to do with a vacation photo.
When GTA 6 does eventually land, it will have to hit the ground running in terms of making money. The development costs associated with the game are enormous, and it will probably take 2-3 years just to break even. Rockstar might also have to re-evaluate how it makes money within the game. The company got burned in 2019 when they tried to launch the Diamond Resort Hotel and Casino inside GTA 5, which included some features borrowed from online slots games. That move didn’t sit well with regulators. Even though it was physically impossible to win real-world money from the digital online slots inside the casino, regulators took issue with the fact that real-world money could be spent on the slots. This is a contentious issue in the United States of America, where playing online slots of any kind is prohibited in some states. It caused even more problems in Europe and further afield, where entire countries have banned online slots. That was an expensive misfire for Rockstar, although it evidently didn’t stop the game from turning a massive profit.
We shouldn’t take a single snap of a beach as evidence that GTA 6 is on the horizon, but nor should we overlook the fact that the picture seems to have been intended as a hint. More GTA 6 news will inevitably land in the near future, and we’ll bring it to you here when it happens.
