Should Rockstar release more DLCs for GTA Online ahead of GTA 6?

Rockstar Games currently find themselves in a position they have rarely ever been in: at odds with its fanbase. The GTA franchise, for the longest time, has been the golden goose that the company has done quite well to keep well-fed. The series has, in turn, made them a household name in gaming.

The GTA franchise is synonymous with excellency in the video games industry and has long been held up as one of the most successful properties in popular media at large.

GTA 5 is one of the most successful games of all time. However, going into the latter half of the decade, GTA Online emerged as Rockstar's biggest game. The game has always had a strong core player base and provides Rockstar with a steady source of revenue through microtransactions.

It, therefore, begs the question of whether Rockstar Games really even need GTA 6 at this point.

Should Rockstar release more DLCs for GTA Online ahead of GTA 6?

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The success of Grand Theft Auto Online is one of the biggest reasons why fans have been starved of a sequel in the franchise. There are also other factors that come into play such as the development on newer hardware simply needing more time as well as the mammoth-sized project that is Red Dead Redemption II.

However, the biggest factor has continuously been Grand Theft Auto Online, which is simply too profitable for Rockstar to give up midway. The game has a strong player base as is evidenced in recent challenges and in the responses to new content drops.

It makes little financial sense for Rockstar to drop all momentum and shift gears towards an entirely new project. In a sense, continuing with GTA Online is far safer than spending multiple years working on an entirely new project from scratch.

On the one hand, it is good to see a developer supporting a game long after its release. On the other hand, fans are not going to be happy with the fact that Rockstar are essentially delaying a sequel for as long as possible.

Therefore, it is quite the tight-rope act to time a sequel while also introducing frequent updates so that GTA Online players do not feel abandoned. A good balance would be to simply announce the sequel at some point in the next year and support GTA Online through updates until its release.