Bloomberg's GTA 6 Making-Of: The Budget Rockstar Denies, the Project Americas Codename and a Faster Next Game

Bloomberg published a long report by Jason Schreier on the making of Grand Theft Auto VI, built on interviews with the studio's leadership.[1] It does not add story or online-mode detail; its value is context on how the game was built, what it cost and why it took so long.[1]

The budget remains officially unstated. Rockstar's head of publishing, Jennifer Kolbe, rejected the widely repeated claim that the game cost more than the $1.5 billion spent on Dubai's Burj Khalifa, but gave no figure in its place.[1][2] Bloomberg's own assessment is that GTA VI is still the most expensive game ever made, based on the number of staff and the years of active development involved.[1][2]

The development history is really two games. Rockstar's plan had been to work on GTA VI and Red Dead Redemption 2 at the same time, but as the western grew, Rob Nelson mobilised most of the studio, senior leadership included, to finish it, which pushed the next Grand Theft Auto back several years.[1] GTA VI became the studio's primary focus only after Red Dead Redemption 2 shipped in 2018.[1][3]

Leadership changed in the same period. After the departures that followed Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar split the head-of-development role three ways between Aaron Garbut, Phil Hooker and Rob Nelson rather than appointing a single director, a structure Nelson acknowledged drew internal grumbling.[3]

Two delays followed. Kolbe had to call Take-Two chief executive Strauss Zelnick to move the game first to May 2026 and then to 19 November 2026, a second slip GTA BOOM reports left him stunned at the time; he has since called the delays a wise investment.[3]

Nelson described one stretch of that work as a dark period, when the shape of the project was still unsettled.[1] The clearest technical cause of at least one delay was the simulation behind the non-player characters: after the 2023 reveal, Rockstar realised those systems would take far more time and people than planned.[1] Phil Hooker told Bloomberg the studio chose to move the date rather than ship something that hit the schedule but was not the game it wanted to make.[1]

One long-running rumour is now confirmed. An early codename for the project was Project Americas, chosen because the plan at that stage covered large areas of both North and South America before the scope narrowed to Miami and its surroundings.[1]

Scale is also visible in headcount. Bloomberg reports Rockstar had 2,441 employees across 12 offices in 2018 and now employs roughly 4,711 people, making it substantially larger than its direct competitors even as the wider industry contracts.[1]

The forward-looking claim is that this will not repeat. Rockstar's leaders say GTA VI is a foundation of engine, tools and team that lets them move faster next time, and they point to Vice City's sub-year development on the back of GTA III as precedent.[3] Aaron Garbut told Bloomberg the studio is not going to rip that work apart.[3]

Bloomberg also set out the commercial stakes, reporting analyst expectations of about 40 million copies sold on PlayStation and Xbox and more than $3 billion in the first four months, against GTA V's 230 million lifetime sales and roughly $500 million a year from GTA Online.[2]