Grand Theft Auto 6 (GTA 6) is possibly one of the most anticipated games of all time. Although the gameplay has not yet been revealed, the trailers released have already impressed players with its high technical level.
With one of the biggest budgets in entertainment history, the game raises questions about the costs of the next generation of gaming. However, a former Rockstar producer believes that GTA 7 could be significantly cheaper to produce than its predecessor.
According to Obbe Vermeij, former technical director at Rockstar Games, the advancement of artificial intelligence tools will play a crucial role in reducing costs.
“GTA 7 will be cheaper to produce than GTA 6. I imagine if, say, you make a cutscene, you could just… all the characters in the cutscene could be rendered by AI, including the conversation, if you just describe the scene. That could be your first version of a cutscene. There will still be artists to do the higher-level creative stuff, and there will be bugs to fix and everything, but I think most of the work will probably be replaced.”
As a programmer, Vermeij also commented on the criticism surrounding the replacement of professionals by AI. For him, it is just another natural step of automation in the gaming industry.
“This has basically been happening to programmers for years. When we started GTA 3, an engine was just the rendering part, but programmers were still writing the physics, the collision detection, and, you know, the animation code — and all of that has kind of been removed from the individual projects and is now part of the engine, right? Whether it’s Unity, Unreal, or Rage. So there’s already a ton of work that programmers used to do that they don’t need to do anymore.”
“When I started, programmers were about a third of a typical team, and now it’s maybe 10, 15 percent. So that’s already happened with programmers. And now with AI, even more work is going to be automated.”
Grand Theft Auto 6 will be released on May 26, 2026 for PlaySation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
