Rockstar North co-studio head and GTA 6 lead developer Rob Nelson explains that the open-world game has taken so long to come out, in part, due to a scrapped version dubbed “Project Americas.”
I don’t know if anyone really noticed, but Rockstar Games has taken quite a while to follow up GTA 5 and release GTA 6. While we’ve had the massive Red Dead Redemption 2 in the meantime, the 13-year wait for GTA 6 has made fans quite feverish to play the next game in Rockstar’s iconic crime series. Many assumed Rockstar was working on a rotation of GTA and Red Dead games, GTA 6 was only confirmed to be in development in 2022. However, the first plans for GTA 6 began not too long after the last entry was released.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Nelson confirmed that in 2015 a number of Rockstar staffers flew to Miami on their first research trip for GTA 6. At that time, the game was code-named “Project Americas,” with the aim of featuring parts of North and South America on its map. Rather than every studio working on one title, the plan was for Rockstar North to develop GTA 6 concurrently with Rockstar San Diego’s development of Red Dead Redemption 2.
However, as the scale of Red Dead Redemption 2 grew, Nelson realized the game required Rockstar’s involvement at large, meaning that GTA 6 had to be pushed back for several years to get its western epic across the finish line. However, this meant that when GTA 6 finally did release, things the team built would “pay off when we get to the game.”
Nelson confirmed that while Rockstar typically works on multiple games across its many studios, the bulk of the company’s staff across the 11 Rockstar studios are now working on one project at a time.