According to most reports, GTA 6's release date is several years out, and given how long Red Dead Redemption 2 took Rockstar Games to make, this isn't very surprising. Rockstar Games used to release games at a rapid-fire rate, releasing GTA 3, GTA Vice City, and GTA San Andreas between 2001 and 2004. Present-day Rockstar Games now needs more time than this just to ship a single game. Why? Well, because its games now push design limits and the hardware they run on, which is why they are held as the premier developer of the industry.

To this end, during a recent GDC 2021 presentation, Rockstar Games teased that it's exploring machine learning approaches. What exactly this will mean for GTA 6 and future releases is tough to say, but judging by the presentation, it sounds like Rockstar Games is predominately investigating this technology in relationship to AI, an area of video game development that hasn't seen a ton of meaningful improvement lately.

To put this investigation into perspective, Rockstar Games revealed during the same presentation that horses have over 3,000 animations across 23 unique movement styles. That's a ton of work by the animation team, yet it sounds like it's not the peak for Rockstar Games, but the tip of the iceberg, which is why it's exploring machine learning, because there's no way it will ever be able to field an animation team capable of taking the work done on horses in RDR2 and apply it to the entire game.

I'm hyped. Apprently they're looking into machine learning approaches according to their GDC presentation. The next title is going to be insane pic.twitter.com/r2alxZaTr4

— Ben (@videotech_) August 12, 2021

For now, what the implications of this are for GTA 6 remain to be seen, but it sounds like Rockstar Games is looking to raise the bar again after raising it in 2018 with Red Dead Redemption 2, which remains the bar for game design and technical achievement. That said, this is assuming GTA 6 will be the developer's next game. Of course, this is a very safe assumption, but it's an assumption nonetheless. For all we know Rockstar Games is about to revive Table Tennis.



Posted: Aug 16, 2021 7:54 am
Related Forum: Grand Theft Auto Forum

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/gta-6-release-next-gen-rockstar-games-tease/