Bloomberg’s Making-of Feature: Rockstar Says Its Next Game Won’t Take Another Eight Years

Reported — this is a Bloomberg feature by Jason Schreier, published October 14. Bloomberg is paywalled and we could not read it ourselves, so the quotes below are as VGC and Dexerto reprinted them. The people quoted are named Rockstar staff, speaking to Bloomberg.

On the next game, Phil Hooker, one of Rockstar’s heads of development: “The engine, the tools and the team we’ve built during this project will allow us to do things more quickly,” and “I feel confident that we can build on top of this and go more sideways than upwards to build more compelling content.” Aaron Garbut: “We foundationally changed a lot of stuff on this project. But now it’s done, and we’re not going to rip it apart,” and “The last 30 years has been practice for where we got to here.”

On the delay, head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe recalls Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick’s reaction: “I think he said, ‘You’re kidding. Please tell me you’re kidding.’” The feature describes development led by three veterans — Garbut, Hooker and Rob Nelson — rather than one director. Outlets also report that Kolbe denied the viral claim that the game cost more than Dubai’s Burj Khalifa; we have only a paraphrase of that, not her words.

Two new screenshots ran with the feature: Jason and Lucia muddy at a dirt track with a beer, and a car on Ocean Drive at sunset under a low police helicopter.

The limit of this story: no new date, price or feature was announced. “Won’t take as long” is a promise with no timeline, and Rockstar has still not published a budget.