GTA 6 Dev Engine Upgrades May Shorten Future Release Timelines

Rockstar says the long wait for its next game also included building tools to speed up future releases, and players who remember faster times have reason to hope.

If you grew up when new games came out every year or two, you've probably noticed how far dev cycles have stretched lately. Major studios now sit close to a decade between big releases, and for many players, that gap has become hard to accept.

Naughty Dog is a good place to start. On the PS3, you got Uncharted 1, 2, and 3, along with The Last of Us. That's four single-player AAA games from one studio on one console, and they were some of the system's best. The PS4 brought two of them, Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us Part II.

On the PS5, you've had nothing new. Instead, Naughty Dog has released remasters and remakes of games that were already remastered and remade. Uncharted has gone quiet, The Last of Us has gone quiet, and the next project on the horizon is Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

Looking across those three console generations shows how much dev cycles have changed. Nearly any developer around this long follows the same path. Dev cycles have grown to nearly ten years, and that's become the norm for big studios, which is hard to believe.

Rockstar is the biggest example. On the PS2, you got GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas. The PS3 added GTA IV and GTA V. Then the PS4 came and went without a new GTA. You did get Red Dead Redemption 2, which is a great game, but it isn't GTA. Now, more than ten years after 2013, GTA VI is finally close.

In an interview, Rockstar told a reporter that the long development time wasn't just about making the biggest, best game it could. 

The studio also used the time to set up its engine and tools so dev cycles can be shorter going forward. You can hope they're right, because waiting this long for each new entry gets old. Brand-new IPs are still coming out, but some franchises are worth seeing more often, and GTA VI is one of them. If Rockstar's plan works, the GTA VI wait could lead to shorter dev cycles.

Capcom is a useful contrast. It's one reason Resident Evil has been so easy to follow lately. There might be a couple of years between releases, but once the games start coming, they come fast and at a high level. Resident Evil 9 arrived this year, and Resident Evil Veronica has been delayed but is still planned for a 2027 launch.

Before that, you had a run of Resident Evil 7, the 2 Remake, the 3 Remake, Village, and the 4 Remake, all of which led up to 9. On top of that, Capcom has Onimusha, Monster Hunter Stories 3, and Pragmata all arriving in the same year as Resident Evil Veronica.

That is a strong example of what tighter scheduling looks like when a publisher gets it right, and it shows Capcom has figured out something many others haven't. Other developers should take a page from that approach and focus on the future, rather than putting out one game per generation.

Naughty Dog has no real excuse for how this generation went. 

The studio worked on The Last of Us Online, and it should have known better than to remove multiplayer from The Last of Us Part II, pour resources into a standalone version, get far along, and then cancel it. Sony is reportedly unhappy with how long the studio has taken. You can still respect what the studio does.

Naughty Dog makes incredible games, and Uncharted in particular is a series worth praising. But waiting this long between releases isn't acceptable, and dev cycles this size are hard to defend. The report on why GTA VI took so long is worth reading for the full picture. What stands out is that Rockstar is aware the games are taking too long. The hope now is that long dev cycles won't return once this one is out.