Red Dead Redemption Shouldn't Have Worked

Tackling The PS3 And Xbox 360

By the time the seventh generation of consoles reached its halfway mark, Rockstar was no stranger to pushing the envelope of its genre. It had utilised Renderware for Grand Theft Auto 3's debut in 3D and later brought in the Euphoria physics engine for 4 in 2008. After concluding production on the latter and its expansions, the team started considering routes for their next project.

It was at this point that the developer turned back to Red Dead Redemption, which had been in production since 2005. Rockstar San Diego was handling the bulk of the development duties at that point and the title was officially announced in 2009. Formerly known as Angel Studios, they had been acquired by Rockstar at the turn of the millennium. At the peak of the game's development, 180 employees at San Diego were working on the game.

As a developer mostly known for Midnight Club at the time, the team would need to make a gargantuan leap. So began a long-winded production project that would see the team share duties across other co-opted studios under Rockstar. In time, other employees from Toronto, Vancouver, Leeds and New England would all join the crew.

In total, a massive 800 employees would be working on the game; while not quite as large as the 1,000 that worked on Grand Theft Auto 4, it was still a colossal amount. The same was true of the game's price tag, costing between 80 and 100 million US dollars.

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