Former Rockstar lead: "GTA 7 will be cheaper to make than GTA 6"

Obbe Vermeij:: "I think there's not gonna be a bigger game than GTA 6 because a lot of that stuff is going to be taken over by AI whether we want it or not."

Grand Theft Auto V was released in 2013, and we have been waiting for a sequel for twelve years. Grand Theft Auto VI will arrive in May 2026, thirteen years after its predecessor, and is expected to be by far the most expensive game ever made.

We hardly dare to think about Grand Theft Auto VII, and if it follows the same pattern, it will skip the entire PlayStation 6/Xbox Next generation and be released first on PlayStation 7 and Xbox Nextnext. But maybe we won't have to wait that long. With AI, costs and work are expected to be streamlined.

Rockstar Games' former technical lead Obbe Vermeij has several Grand Theft Auto titles under his belt, and in an interview with Kiwi Talks (thanks Insider Gaming), he says that "the bulk of the work is probably going to be replaced" with AI technology. He goes on to add that "GTA 7 will be cheaper to make than GTA 6", although he admits that it will be a long time before we see if he is right.

Although many are critical of the idea that games will be developed by AI in the future and fear that the final human touch and creativity will suffer, Vermeij says there is no doubt about where the industry and Rockstar are headed:

"I think there's not gonna be a bigger game than GTA 6 because a lot of that stuff is going to be taken over by AI whether we want it or not. So, I think these banks of artists that are just building massive maps or massive cutscenes, I think some of that will be taken over by AI in the next, you know, five years or so."

So, it seems like game development will be optimized by AI in the future, but do you think it will be just as good if AI takes care of the design of worlds, cutscenes, and other elements?