A gaming industry analyst, Michael Pachter, is now making bold claims about Grand Theft Auto 6’s scope and size, implying that Rockstar may be working on a continent-sized overworld map, one that players will be able to freely travel and explore. Pachter’s statement includes a number of other details, too, and predicates its argument on the idea that Rockstar has been working on the game since 2014.

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While there’s been much discussion about Grand Theft Auto 6’s playable map in particular, Pachter believes that Rockstar aims to deliver a mash-up of maps from all previous mainline GTA games with significant portions of the European continent. Pachter singles out London as a definitive hotspot of activity in the game, with players being able to smuggle drugs and arms across continents, for example. There’s not much to corroborate these claims on their own, but a recent Take-Two Interactive session swap patent does suggest incredibly large maps, for sure.

Pachter believes that Grand Theft Auto 6 is a 10-year production that Rockstar wants to use as a platform for up to 500 hours of gameplay by default. While some leakers have gone so far as to suggest that GTA 6 might get a gameplay trailer in 2022, few have made claims quite as concrete as those that Pachter has recently been making. Suffice it to say that everything the analyst says should be taken with a pinch of salt at this point in time.

Rockstar Games did confirm that GTA 6 is currently in active development earlier this year, though sources generally agree that the production has been taking place since the late 2010s. Pachter, for one, believes that Rockstar started working on Grand Theft Auto 6 even earlier still, in 2014, and that the game would inevitably be coming out sometime in 2024.

Even though the excitement about the next GTA game from Rockstar is as palpable as it’s ever been, leakers warn that fans shouldn’t expect news about GTA 6 anytime soon. This information tracks with Pachter’s claims, too, as Rockstar wouldn’t want to officially announce Grand Theft Auto 6 years before its actual release.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is currently in active development.

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