Outside of the London expansion for the first Grand Theft Auto video game, the series has settled on satirizing America ever since. Gamers have committed mass atrocities in fictionalized versions of New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, and there’s a simple reason for that: There’s no place like the good ol' United States.
Rockstar Co-Founder Dan Houser revealed on the Lex Fridman podcast that there’s a reason why the series keeps returning to these iconic cities. Houser said:
'I think for a full GTA game, we always decided there was so much Americana inherent in the IP, it would be really hard to make it work in London or anywhere else. You know, you needed guns, you needed these larger-than-life characters.'
The series has poked fun at America, and Americana, for a quarter-century, relying on the melting pot of the country to serve as a backdrop for slice-of-life fun that’s "almost like a sort of psychotic version of a [Charles] Dickens book." The stories have had characters that feel cartoonishly real, sometimes frighteningly so.
But that’s what makes the franchise so fun—it satirizes society by turning up the ridiculousness without the need to make stuff up. American history and culture have plenty to offer game developers, and the cars we love to drive when we play help set the time and place.
It’s a core part of the game’s identity. According to Houser, "It just felt like the game was so much about America, possibly from an outsider's perspective. But that was so much about what the thing was that it wouldn't really have worked in the same way elsewhere."
Rockstar was initially scheduled to launch Grand Theft Auto IV this fall, but delayed it until May 26, 2026. That’s when it’ll launch on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. It’ll launch on PC later. The studio hasn’t announced the game’s price, but it could be as cheap as $70 or as much as $100. GTA V was originally released in 2013 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
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