Rockstar Cancels Red Dead Redemption/GTA IV Remasters After GTA Trilogy Backlash!

It was more than a little surprising when Rockstar Games unveiled last October that a remaster of the original PS2-era Grand Theft Auto titles was not only on the way but more so, it was set to be released within the next 6 weeks! – The fall-out from GTA: The Trilogy is now, of course, almost the stuff of legend. The so-called ‘remasters’ were shoddy at best and received a lot of well-deserved negative feedback from both fans and critics.

In retrospect though, the clues were there that GTA: The Trilogy was going to be pretty terrible. We did, of course, have the very short release date announcement that clearly indicated that Rockstar wanted this out of the door before Christmas. More so, with the near-total lack of gameplay footage leading up to the release, this should always represent a warning sign that if they’re not willing to show us any direct footage from the game, they’re probably not that confident that it looks as good as it should!

So, GTA: The Trilogy came and it very quickly went. Did it make Rockstar money? Probably. But equally probably nowhere near as much as they hoped. – Following a report via Eurogamer, however, it seems that the failure of GTA: The Trilogy has potentially led to two pretty major casualties.

Rockstar Cancel Red Dead Redemption/GTA IV Remasters!

While rumoured for quite some time, we should note that Rockstar Games never confirmed, in any way, the upcoming release of remastered versions of Red Dead Redemption or GTA IV (despite a lot of fan demand for the former). It does, however, seem likely that if these games were in development, they would likely be getting handled by the same team that did the GTA: The Trilogy (Grove Street Games).

So, with this in mind, given the lacklustre sales/reception of GTA: The Trilogy, the source is claiming (with apparent inside information) that this has led Rockstar to, temporarily at best it seems, cancel plans to remaster Red Dead Redemption and GTA IV.

Maybe More Delayed than Outright Canceled?

While this will clearly be disappointing news to many, information recently appeared online suggesting that Rockstar has massively ramped up work on GTA 6 that may now see it released as soon as 2024 or, somewhat optimistically I think, even 2023! – And lest we forget that all prior rumours regarding GTA 6 all indicated a release date of 2025 at the absolute earliest!

As such, we might actually be looking more at a combination of factors here. Namely, the lacklustre performance of GTA: The Trilogy has potentially seen them decide to completely refocus their entire efforts on GTA 6’s development rather than slightly splitting resources in now only handling their own in-house title, but also with the added workload of overseeing a remaster of two other major titles at the same time (not, incidentally, that they seemed to give GTA: The Trilogy much attention given the shoddy state it was released in).

So, in other words, we might be looking more at an indefinite delay here rather than an outright cancellation. If nothing else though, if Grove Street Games was given the job of remastering Red Dead Redemption and GTA IV, we should probably be thankful that this has, at least for the moment, been canned!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!