Rumor: Grand Theft Auto 6 Has An Updated Weapon Wheel

Rockstar Games may have made a big change to a small detail in Grand Theft Auto 6.

Tez2 shared this insight about potential changes Rockstar games did for the game:

It did. I believe last year they experimented with smaller wheels, or sub-wheels, within the big weapon wheel.

But this may have since been scrapped, or updated to a different style.

How The Weapon Wheels Currently Work

Weapon wheels are a relatively new innovation for the Grand Theft Auto games. They were originally added in Grand Theft Auto: ChinaTown Wars on the PlayStation Portable.

It then made its big mainline game debut in Grand Theft Auto V. It was then retroactively added to the games in Grand Theft Auto Trilogy – The Definitive Edition.

There are eight dedicated slots to specific types of weapons in the wheel:

• Handguns
• Machine guns
• Assault rifles
• Sniper rifles
• Melee
• Shotguns
• Heavy weapons
• Throwable weapons

If you pick up more than one weapon of the same type, you can go to its respective slot to choose between them. There are different contextual controls to switch them around, whether you are using a controller or a mouse and keyboard.

The wheel will also display how much ammo each weapon’s cartridge can hold, and how much it currently has. When you open up the wheel, you can also choose to eat a snack or pick out body armor.

Does Grand Theft Auto 6 Need Sub-Wheels?

Before weapon wheels, you had to enter a separate menu to scroll through your available weapons. But the older Grand Theft Auto games also had a different limitation.

You originally had to choose to carry only one weapon of a particular type. This clearly reflected system limitations that no longer exist today.

There are two possible reasons to add sub wheels. One is so that players could more easily see the weapons they are picking to go on the main weapon wheel.

That could either make it more complicated or easier to understand. It would depend on Rockstar’s execution.

But it’s also possible that Rockstar is adding even more subsystems to their weapon system as a whole. For example, they could be adding a way to add attachments to weapons.

Tez2’s explanation makes it sound like this sub-wheel system may not make it to the final game. But if Rockstar found new needs to give players more menus, we’ll find out when the game comes out this May 2026.