{"id":93312,"date":"2026-10-16T04:24:02","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T20:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=93312"},"modified":"2026-10-16T04:24:02","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T20:24:02","slug":"why-rockstar-canceled-its-playstation-exclusive-follow-up-to-gta-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=93312","title":{"rendered":"Why Rockstar Canceled Its PlayStation-Exclusive Follow-Up To GTA 4"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Jason_Duval_10.jpg?w=300\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At E3 2009, Sony announced that it was partnering with Rockstar on a PlayStation-exclusive spy game called Agent, with Rockstar founders Sam and Dan Houser overseeing development. The game never materialized, though, and now Dan Houser has shared more details as to why.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Speaking to IGN, Houser said Agent never coming out shouldn&#8217;t be a total shock because he worked on &#8220;a bunch of games that never came out.&#8221; He said Rockstar tried with two or three different teams to make Agent&#8211;an open-world spy game&#8211;but the teams just &#8220;could not get it right.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;And it never came out. We concluded that it was not a game we were ever going to figure out how to make. Other people can try, but I personally think it&#8217;s hard,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Great spy movies like the James Bond series work so well because they take viewers all over the world, but &#8220;that&#8217;s not an experience in an open-world game that really works,&#8221; Houser said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;So we tried lots of things and couldn&#8217;t get it quite right,&#8221; Houser said, going on to say that the teams built great elements but they never came together in a full package.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Images of Agent, which was reportedly set in the &#8217;70s, have emerged over the years, showing off some of what Rockstar was planning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2009, then-Take-Two president Ben Feder told GameSpot that Agent was being positioned to be the next Grand Theft Auto.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s the A team working on an AAA title,\u201d he said at the time. \u201cI think the subject matter, the characters, the story, the environment, the background\u2013all the elements are there. It\u2019s such a rich environment to play in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Across the industry, games get canceled regularly&#8211;Blizzard has said it cancels 50% of the games it starts&#8211;but Rockstar&#8217;s Agent got more traction because of the studio&#8217;s profile. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rockstar never gave Agent a release date, but it would have followed up 2008&#8217;s Grand Theft Auto 4. The next game that Rockstar North led development on after GTA 4 was 2013&#8217;s GTA 5, and now Rockstar North is set to release GTA 6 on November 19. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n<p><br \/>\n<center><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/why-rockstar-canceled-its-playstation-exclusive-follow-up-to-gta-4\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source <\/a><br \/>\n<center\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At E3 2009, Sony announced that it was partnering with Rockstar on a PlayStation-exclusive spy game called Agent, with Rockstar founders Sam and Dan Houser&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[3716,20688,3402,31750,3400],"class_list":["post-93312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-canceled","tag-followup","tag-gta","tag-playstationexclusive","tag-rockstar","wpcat-32-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/93313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}