The next release of the "Grand Theft Auto" franchise may most probably be pushed back as one of Rockstars most influential executives, Leslie Benzies, has left the company for good.

According to Kotaku, the Rockstar North studio lead has decided not to come back to the company after taking a 17-month long sabbatical leave. "We can confirm that Leslie Benzies went on sabbatical on September 1, 2014 and has decided not to return to work for the company. We are very grateful for Leslie's contributions to Rockstar over the last 15 years as we worked together to make some amazing games," Rockstar said to Kotaku in an official statement.

Benzies' team of game creators and developers in the Scotland-based Rockstar North have been foundational to developing the "GTA" franchise and many other Rockstar games. With this, there is reason to believe that the next instalment of the video game, "Grand Theft Auto VI," could be seeing a delay in its development and consequently its release as well. This is all dependent on whether Rockstar can bounce back from the loss of Benzies.

According to Neurogadget, there have been rumours flying around that "GTA VI" will no longer be launching for the current gaming consoles, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, but will instead be created for the next line of consoles- the Xbox Two and the PlayStation 5.

The PlayStation 5 is reported to be currently already in development, after a job opening was spotted for a senior game developer over at Sony. The job posting said, "We have an exciting opportunity at Sony Computer Entertainment of America (PlayStation). We seek a senior game programmer to assist us in developing a game used for R&D purposes related to our next generation gaming system."

Although this may indicate that the Playstation 5 is currently in development, it is hard to tell how far the company is in terms of development.

If "GTA VI" is to launch for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Two, fans can look forward to 4k resolutions for the game thus resulting to crisper graphics.