Rockstar North president says scale of open-world game required internal studios from around the world to work together to produce open-world game.

Grand Theft Auto V was developed by more than 1,000 people across multiple Rockstar Games studios, Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies told Develop in a new interview.

Benzies said production on “giant” Rockstar titles–like GTAV or Red Dead Redemption–is no longer handled by one studio alone, but rather multiple internal studios working in tandem.

“That“s the way we work now–everyone works on GTA, or Red Dead, and so on, then we move on to the next thing,“ Benzies said. “Now that it takes 1,000 people to make a game; that“s a requirement. But we don“t want 1,000 in one place.“

Asked if it took 1,000 people to develop GTAV, Benzies said, “It’s probably more. Much more.”
Rockstar North’s headcount alone is 365 people.

The reason the number of developers has risen is because of the size of the project, Benzies said. The GTAV gameworld is reportedly larger than Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Grand Theft Auto IV combined.

“And that“s because of the size of the thing, we are modelling at such a minute detail,” Benzies said. “Once upon a time the car models have four moving parts. Now there are 15 alone in a car“s retractable roof. The detail is ten, twenty times greater than GTA IV, so it takes ten, twenty times more people.”

GTAV launched last month for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, generating a record-setting $800 million on launch day alone and $1 billion in three days. Versions of the game for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are likely to be released in 2014, according to one analyst.

The game’s multiplayer mode–Grand Theft Auto Online–arrived on Tuesday and has faced numerous bugs and issues. Rockstar has released a title update aiming to address the issues on PlayStation 3, while the studio plans to roll out the patch on Xbox 360 soon.

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