Grand Theft Auto VI will ship with a familiar weapon wheel, but getting there was not simple. According to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, Rockstar Games spent "months, if not years" trying to replace the radial menu before deciding the classic design still worked best.
Key points
- Bloomberg's Jason Schreier shared the detail in a follow-up video about his visit to Rockstar North.
- Rockstar wanted a more realistic, limited loadout, closer to Red Dead Redemption 2 than GTA V.
- The team tested "trays and webs" and even no weapon interface at all, then went back to a weapon wheel.
- Schreier links this kind of repeated prototyping to a slow period in development that eased around late 2022 and early 2023.
- GTA 6 is scheduled to launch on November 19, 2026.
Where the story comes from
The detail did not come from a Rockstar press release. It comes from Jason Schreier, the Bloomberg journalist who visited Rockstar North for a feature on the game. In a follow-up YouTube video covering material that did not make the article, Schreier described a conversation with Rob Nelson, Rockstar North's co-studio head and head of development, as reported by TechRadar and Dexerto.
"They spent months, if not years, trying a million different things that would replace the weapon wheel," Schreier said. "They tried trays and webs and all sorts of different things in the UI."
Why Rockstar wanted to change it
The issue started with realism. In GTA V, each character could carry a huge arsenal and pick any gun from a radial menu. Red Dead Redemption 2 took a different approach: Arthur Morgan carried only a few weapons on his body, and the rest stayed on his horse.
According to Schreier, Rockstar wanted GTA 6 to feel more like Red Dead. "They wanted GTA 6's weapon system to be more like Red Dead, where you couldn't just carry an unlimited number of guns," he said, calling it "a little more realistic." The reported plan was to tie extra storage to the player's car and limit what the character carries at any moment.
That created a design problem. A wheel built for a big arsenal would show lots of empty slots when you can only hold a few guns. "If we use a weapon wheel, is that just going to remind people of all these blank spots in it? It'll remind people of what they can't actually do, what they can't carry," Schreier explained, summarising the team's thinking.
What they tried, and where they ended up
Rockstar experimented with several alternatives, according to Schreier:
- Weapon "trays" that would present a smaller set of choices
- Weapon "webs" with a different layout
- Removing the selection interface altogether
"They tried not having one," Schreier said. "After all that, they just wound up back at a weapon wheel, and in the final game it's just a weapon wheel again."
The wheel survives, but the rules around it are reported to be different. Dexerto reports that GTA 6 limits how many guns players can carry and that non-player characters react to weapons that are openly displayed. Rockstar Report sums it up as keeping the speed of the wheel while making the player pick a smaller active loadout. Rockstar has not published a full breakdown of the system, so details may still change before launch.
A window into a long development
Schreier presented the weapon-wheel saga as one example of a wider pattern. He described "dark periods" in development when teams kept reworking prototypes without making much progress, which he said was frustrating for staff. According to Schreier, that phase "really ended when the game started coalescing, I would say around [the] end of 2022, beginning of 2023."
He added that the first GTA 6 trailer, released in December 2023, acted as "a guiding light" for many people on the team because it showed what the finished game would look like.
Small interface choices like this can take a surprising amount of time in open-world games. Weapon selection is something players do thousands of times, so even a small change in how it feels can affect the whole experience. In this case, Rockstar appears to have decided that a familiar control was worth keeping, while changing the systems behind it.
Why it matters
For players, the takeaway is simple: GTA 6 should feel familiar when you switch weapons, but you probably will not be carrying a rocket launcher, a minigun and ten pistols in your pockets. Expect to plan your loadout and to go back to your vehicle for anything extra, much like in Red Dead Redemption 2.
For the industry, the story is a reminder of how much iteration goes into a big-budget game. Rockstar's next release is one of the most anticipated in years. FOX 29 reports that the game launches on November 19, 2026, and even a small detail like the weapon wheel shows how carefully the studio has weighed every system.
Related coverage: whether GTA 6 could really cost the US economy $1 billion · PS6 price warnings
Sources
- TechRadar: Rockstar spent months, if not years, trying to replace the weapon wheel
- Dexerto: GTA 6 devs tried "a million" weapon wheel alternatives
- Game Rant: GTA 6 combat and weapon wheel
- TheGamer: GTA 6 devs spent years trying to replace the weapon wheel
- Rockstar Report: GTA 6 weapon wheel returns
- FOX 29: GTA 6 November 19 launch
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