If you’ve ever hoped to cruise through the neon-drenched streets of Tokyo or tear through the historic alleys of Istanbul in a Grand Theft Auto game, you’re going to be seriously disappointed. A former technical director at Rockstar Games, in an interview with Gameshub, has confirmed that while GTA: Tokyo “almost actually happened,” the franchise is now permanently stuck in a loop of American cities.
Obbe Vermeij, who served as a technical director at the company from 1995 to 2009, recently revealed that going international is simply too massive of a financial risk for the developers to take. He noted that there were active “ideas” for games set in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, and Istanbul, but it was the Tokyo setting that came closest to fruition.
Vermeij, who left right after completing work on GTA 4, mentioned that another studio based in Japan was actually lined up to take Rockstar’s core code and develop GTA: Tokyo. Unfortunately, that plan fell apart. The reason for this geographical lock-in boils down to money and familiarity. When you’ve got billions of dollars riding on a single game release, taking a huge swing on an unfamiliar international location just isn’t worth the gamble.
It’s all on how much time and development cost it takes to make a GTA game
Vermeij explained that because the development cycles for GTA games have stretched so long, sometimes taking 12 years between major entries, they can’t afford to experiment. “People love having these wild ideas but then when you’ve got billions of dollars riding on it it’s too easy to go let’s do what we know again,” Vermeij said.
He argues that the United States is the perfect, safe setting because it’s the “epicenter of Western culture.” Even if players haven’t traveled there, they have a “mental image of the cities” thanks to movies and TV. Trying to set the game somewhere totally new, like GTA: Toronto, just wouldn’t work, according to Vermeij.
This stance echoes comments made recently by Rockstar co-founder and former boss Dan Houser. Houser explained that the series remains firmly rooted in the United States because the entire IP leans so heavily on Americana.
Houser felt that for a full-scale GTA title, the game needs “guns, you needed these larger-than-life characters” that naturally fit the American context. The only real exception was a small mission pack for the original PlayStation 1 called GTA London about 26 years ago, which he called “pretty cute and fun.” However, Houser believes the full experience is fundamentally about America, possibly viewed from an outsider’s perspective.
It’s clear this tight focus on the US is a deliberate creative and business choice. This philosophy isn’t just limited to Rockstar, either. The creators of the post-apocalyptic role-playing series Fallout have also kept their franchise exclusively in the United States, citing their love for the “Americana naivete” that defines its tone.
So, while GTA 6 is set to return to the fictionalized Miami, Vice City, don’t hold your breath for any major changes after that. Vermeij is pretty blunt about the future. “I’m afraid we’re stuck in this loop of about five American cities,” he admitted. “Let’s just get used to it.”
He added that revisiting familiar locations isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since the technology changes so dramatically between releases. Nobody is going to skip GTA 6, even if it’s exorbitantly priced, just because they played a different version of Vice City 20 years ago. It’s an entirely new experience. We can expect to see Liberty City (New York) and Los Santos (LA) again, maybe with a trip back to Las Vegas, but that’s probably the extent of our travels.
Published: Dec 29, 2025 02:30 pm