Rockstar Games: How is a game like GTA V developed? - Quora

Matthew S. Stenquist, Game Developer.

Before you read this, read this first to get a little understanding of how much work goes into building a game like GTA. Gamasutra: Rockstar Spouse's Blog

"Grand Theft Auto 5 is an incredibly complex game for any studio to handle, let alone produce."

The estimated cost for developing such a game of a grandiose scale is in the hundreds of millions with hundreds if not thousands of employees building such a product in collective tandem. Along with a collective hundreds of thousands of man hours, lines of code, qa testing, many years, sleepless nights, and so forth. It's no easy task to build a game that is filled with a wealth & breadth of depth and scale.....

So why make a game this big? The return on investment can make or break a studio. With Rockstar investing millions if not a few hundred million into a game that hasn't even hit market-shelves proving that the concept had worked is extremely risky in todays volatile market. The rewards however, if successful for example of a launch day of 9.5 million purchases at base retail price of $60 can net the company an extremely big pay day (this is just hypothetical speculation). Keeping the studio afloat, and helping establish future ip's in which can generate even more revenue. That's why they do it. And lets be realistic guys did you guys see the trailer. That's why!