'GTA 6' Has Learned One Important Lesson From Past Rockstar Releases, Says CEO

Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two Interactive has promised investors that Grand Theft Auto VI won't repeat the mistakes of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition.

As you're no doubt aware, the the highly antipcated GTA remastered collection launched last November to a wave of negative reviews and refund requests. The trilogy, which contains remasters of GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas, was in a disastrous state at launch.

While many of the more egregious issues have since been patched, the damage to Rockstar's reputation has been done. It's worth noting that it was actually a studio called Grove Street Games that handled development on the remaster. But as others have pointed out, Rockstar is just as guilty for having ever signed off on it.

With the game's rough launch still a vivid memory for investors, Take-Two was asked during its recent third quarter earnings call (thanks, VGC) whether it had learned its lesson and made changes to its approach to quality assurance. Clearly nobody wants to see this happen again, especially with the recently announced GTA VI on the horizon.

“Yes, we are totally focused on quality here and we always want to deliver the best possible experience,” CEO Strauss Zelnick told investors.

“Very occasionally we fall short, and I think the trilogy was an example of that, and the title was launched with some issues. We’ve addressed many of them, there are more fixes to come. Going forward, we remain highly focused on quality, and we are exceedingly confident in all of our upcoming releases.”

After years of speculation, Rockstar Games finally confirmed last week that development on GTA VI is "well underway", although it's unclear exactly when we can expect to learn more. For now, Rockstar's goal is "always to significantly move beyond what we've previously delivered" - given the quality of GTA V, I'd say that's a very ambitious goal to aim for.