Houser said “not during this US presidential term”. He joked that it’s so Trump spergs and Antifa Asshats don’t reeee at them, but I’m guessing it could also mean that there’s something else in the pipeline. Maybe Bully?
The Bully speculation has been out there for a while, on the Rockstar YouTube page they do have one hidden video that people on the GTA Forums noticed... could be for an upcoming update to GTA Online or maybe for something else. If they want to avoid the current year politics they could always turn GTA 6 into a spiritual successor to Vice City, they could set it in the 80's and add more of the state of Florida to it (if the made it kinda like the Scarface game that would be awesome).
In terms of Red Dead Online, I haven't played the game because I'm waiting for the inevitable double dip in unit sales when they release on PC (most likely according to leaks). These are the issues I have observed from watching videos on it:
-Complicated Economy (level locks, premium currency)
-Shitty grind
-Lack of big ticket things to buy
-Lack of properties/businesses
-Lack of PvE content (no heist type missions which were very popular in GTA)
-Can't play with just your friends in freeroam
-Game is just a more complicated reskin of GTA Online
From what I've seen it's having the same problems that the initial GTA Online launch had with lack of content on top of shitty grind and an even worse version of Shark Cards that pretty much force everyone to get them since there's no easy way to grind gold bars in the game. There's tons of potential for the game but they've shot themselves in the foot right at the start by repeating what they did with the GTAO launch.
Also they can't really sell people flying motorcycles, tanks, or orbital cannons in a wild west game so they're banking on the gold bar gimmick and paywalling or level locking items behind the gold which doesn't seem to be going well. The Shark Card kids don't want to play a western game and would rather blow up people in chrome tanks, that's one chunk of individuals who aren't playing. The people who are busy IRL and don't want to grind and buy microtransactions don't have much content so they have no incentive to play the game, all Rockstar has are whales and die hard fans that will buy microtransactions.
GTA Online is a clusterfuck especially in a freeroam public lobby but it can be fun if you play with just friends and away from random people, but it seems like Red Dead Online doesn't want people to mess around in freeroam by themselves or with just friends they're forcing players into PvP situations which turns off a lot of more casual players. It can be argued GTA's grind is bad but if you know what you're doing (and know how to make your own public lobby only you and friends can join) you can make a lot of money in game where you don't have to buy Shark Cards, there's not many means nor any incentive for people to grind in Red Dead.
If Rockstar wants to salvage things they'd need to add more PvE content, make it easier to play with just your friends, add cool things to buy that's not just cosmetics, and change how the gold bars work (I think using gold to buy levellocked items is fine but I don't think there should be 'gold only' items). They also need to find a way to make the game unique, it's literally just a more complicated GTA Online, what they should do is pay attention to how well the FiveM mod is doing in terms of all the Twitch streamers playing it recently. All FiveM does is add RP elements to the game, there's tons of potential there for content to add and with the added content there's more incentive for people to buy gold, and if the Shark Card kid sees his favorite Twitch streamer playing Red Dead Online they might decide to steal moms credit card again to buy some gold.
