We all know that Grand Theft Auto VI is coming. There’s no way that one of the most financially successful games of all time doesn’t get a sequel. Now, thanks to some intriguing new job posts, we have a pretty good clue that Rockstar Games are starting full scale development.
The big lot of job posts on Rockstar’s website was first noticed by friend of Marooners’ Rock Liana “Lili” Ruppert in an article for comicbook.com. Although GTA VI isn’t mentioned by name, the volume of new programming, art, and animation positions available rather strongly suggest that this isn’t just continuing development on an existing title such as Red Dead Redemption 2. Furthermore, one of the job postings is for a Senior Graphics Programmer, and says “seeking a senior graphics programmer to help breathe life, realism and fun into our next-generation games.” That makes it sound pretty likely that a possible GTA 6 would be targeting the next generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft.
Neither of those two publishers have made any announcements regarding future consoles, though suspicions and rumors all point to a 2020 release dates from one or both companies. For Microsoft in particular, the announcement from Turn 10 Studios that they would be breaking from their every other year Forza release schedule and continuing to support Forza 7 in 2019 looks to be a strong indicator. Readers may remember that Forza Motorsport 5 was an Xbox One launch title. A Forza Motorsport 8 launching with Microsoft’s next Xbox console would make perfect sense.
If the hiring spree is for GTA 6, then fans likely wouldn’t be seeing a released title until at least 2021, and more likely 2022. Red Dead Redemption 2 was announced two years before it finally released, and was certainly in full production at least a year prior to that announcement. By 2022, GTA V will be celebrating its ninth birthday. It won’t be quite as long a wait as between Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts 3, but that’s still going to be a pretty long time.
