Grand Theft Auto 7 should be cheaper to make than GTA 6 thanks to AI

Grand Theft Auto 6 reportedly has a budget that is north of $2 billion, but Rockstar's next-gen Grand Theft Auto 7 should be cheaper to make thanks to AI reducing the man-hours required during development.

In a new interview with former Rockstar Games Technical Lead Obbe Vermeij on KIWI TALKS, who worked on many of the iconic entries in the GTA franchise including Vice City and San Andreas, who talked about the future of the franchise past GTA 6. He said that GTA 7 should be cheaper to make than GTA 6 because much of the development work will be replaced with AI, with things like working on the maps and cutscenes.

No more manual labor and important man-hours would be spent on these tasks, so it's expected that Grand Theft Auto 7 should be cheaper to produce than Grand Theft Auto 6. We shouldn't expect to see GTA 7 on the market for many years to come, but Take-Two has already mentioned GTA 7... so we know it's coming, it's absolutely inevitable no matter how long it takes.

We also posted a story not too long ago showing what Grand Theft Auto 7 could look like on the next-gen PlayStation 7 console using AI-powered graphics, and now we've got this story about an AI-powered GTA 7. You can check out that story below.

The future of the gaming industry and game developers is in question with the rise of AI, as companies have been and will continue to slice and dice jobs, replacing them with AI. Microsoft just did this, with thousands of jobs gone and game in development shelved, even after spending close to $100 billion acquiring Activision-Blizzard.

Rockstar is going to make tens of billions of dollars over years on Grand Theft Auto 6, and yet it's inevitable that we'll see the developer culling jobs and replacing them with AI. I don't think we'll see GTA 7 quicker because of it -- as the developer and publisher Take-Two will want to milk GTA 6 for at least 10 years -- but I bet AI is the most talked about topic at the studio right now.

We recently heard that GTA 6 will be changing the industry itself, with Rockstar's new "Project ROME" turning GTA 6 into the "next big metaverse" where ROME (the Rockstar Online Modding Engine) will see GTA 6 featuring custom experiences by top creators and regular updates including new missions and even cities.

One of the things that I'm personally looking forward to in GTA 6 is that everything in the game has a physical place, with things like roads getting destroyed during big battles with rockets. Physical destruction is something I've loved in games since the days of Red Faction in the 90s on PC, so I can't want to see just how destructible the world is in GTA 6.

Grand Theft Auto 6 will be dropping onto the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles on May 26, 2026.