GTA Tokyo "almost actually happened" until the idea fizzled out: "It doesn't make sense to set it in some left-field location for novelty"

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GTA Tokyo "almost actually happened" until the idea fizzled out: "It doesn't make sense to set it in some left-field location for novelty" News By Ashley Bardhan published 23 December 2025

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Do you have big dreams of the Grand Theft Auto games crashing through Colombia? Veering through Vienna, going international? Well, crush them. Former Rockstar technical director Obbe Vermeij says it'll never happen.

"It doesn't make sense to set it in some left-field location for novelty. GTA: Toronto? It just wouldn't work," Vermeij says decisively in a new interview with GamesHub. Rockstar is probably not willing to add financial risk to an already disgustingly lucrative franchise. "It's just not realistic. I would love it, and if games still took a year to make then yeah sure, you can have a little fun, but you're not going to get that when there’s a GTA every 12 years."

"We had ideas about GTA games in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow and Istanbul. Tokyo almost actually happened," Vermeij explains. "Another studio in Japan were going to do it, take our code and do GTA: Tokyo. But then that didn't happen in the end."

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With a bajillion-dollar franchise like GTA, "it's too easy to go let's do what we know again." To play it safe. The familiar sun and smog of Vice City, USA is reliable, "and also America is basically the epicenter of Western culture, so everybody knows the cities, even people who haven't been there. They have a mental image of the cities."

"Nobody is going to say that they're not going to play GTA VI because they’ve already played Vice City. That doesn’t make sense," Vermeij concludes. "They'll revisit New York again. They'll go back to LA or maybe Las Vegas. I'm afraid we're stuck in this loop of about five American cities. Let's just get used to it."

GTA 6 likely won't cost $100, former Rockstar technical director says, and it's all thanks to GTA Online: "This is just something that the internet has decided."

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Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. TOPICS Rockstar Games Rockstar CATEGORIES PS5 PS4 Xbox Series X Xbox One PC Gaming Platforms PlayStation Xbox Ashley BardhanSenior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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