GTA 6: What we know about the long-awaited new Grand Theft Auto game

It has been a decade since the release of GTA 5

One of the most highly anticipated games of a generation is getting closer to being released.

Rockstar Games has confirmed that the trailer for GTA 6 will be revealed in December - although there's still no release date for the game itself.

It has been 10 years since Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto 5.

The fifth numbered instalment in the series is the second best-selling video game ever behind Minecraft, with more than 185 million copies bought.

GTA 5 is the second biggest selling video game of all time

Rockstar Games officially confirmed it was working on Grand Theft Auto 6 in February 2022.

In a statement on Wednesday, president Sam Houser said its first trailer would be unveiled in December to celebrate the company's 25th anniversary.

The first Grand Theft Auto video game was released in 1997 and became a best-seller despite mixed reviews. Fast forward 25 years and the franchise is critically acclaimed, has shipped more than 405 million units, and is frequently ranked among the greatest and best-selling video games.

For GTA 5, Rockstar Games and Rockstar North won best studio and best developer from Edge magazine and received the Bafta Academy Fellowship Award at the 10th British Academy Video Games Awards.

Fans were sent into a frenzy at the GTA 6 announcement, having waited a long time for the follow-up, and rumours about it have rumbled for almost 10 years.

Leaks give glimpse

The biggest news on the sequel so far came unexpectedly last September, when an unprecedented leak surfaced online that contained over 90 videos and screenshots from an early development of GTA 6.

Rockstar acknowledged the hack as legitimate, admitting: "We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto.

"We are extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you all in this way. We will update everyone again soon and, of course, will properly introduce you to this next game when it's ready."

GTA 5 let players run amok in Los Santos - a city with more than a passing resemblance to Los Angeles

The leak gave a first look at possible storylines, characters and locations, although Rockstar insisted the gameplay seen was still in very early stages of creation.

The footage revealed a modern-day Vice City setting and depicted the player characters, Jason and Lucia, entering a strip club and robbing a diner, suggesting that the main protagonists might work together in a Bonnie and Clyde-style story.

Why has it taken so long?

Before the release of GTA 5 in 2013, the longest wait for Grand Theft Auto game in the main series was five years.

Some fans blame the long wait on Rockstar's focus on GTA Online - the multiplayer version of the game that's received frequent updates and is believed to make hundreds of millions of dollars for the company each year.

But sky-high expectations from fans mean that the developer's known for taking its time. During an interview in May Strauss Zelnick, boss of Rockstar's parent company Take-Two Interactive, said each new game in the series "needs to be something you've never seen before".

Rockstar's also behind celebrated Wild West shooter Red Dead Redemption 2

It's true that the series has a reputation for technical innovation and we know that Take-Two has patented new "locomotive technology" for creating more realistic character animations in GTA 6.

Grand Theft Auto isn't Rockstar's only critically acclaimed series with a long development cycle. Its open-world Wild West shooter Red Dead Redemption 2 was released in 2018 and named Game of the Year by multiple magazines and websites. It was praised for its attention to detail and reportedly took eight years to make.

The studio has given itself a lot to live up to - but the desire to play the next chapter has never been higher.