Skipping A GTA 6 PC Release Would Be A Major Blunder For One Key Reason

Summary GTA 6 set to launch Fall 2025 with Vice City return, but will seemingly have a timed exclusive console release.

The PC community was disappointed with the lack of a mention in the official release, with a former Rockstar animator suggesting a delayed port could be due to the company's testing process.

There is potential for Rockstar to release GTA 6 on PC later to maximize revenue, aligning with past release patterns.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is one of the most eagerly anticipated games at the moment, and is due to launch in Fall 2025, over a decade since the launch of its predecessor, GTA 5, but the PC community is disappointed about the game's release. The title is due to return to Vice City for the first time in nearly two decades and will also explore the surrounding areas in Leonida with a Bonnie and Clyde-esque protagonist duo wreaking havoc across the city.

It's clear that the audience for GTA 6 is huge, as its reveal trailer broke records in December 2023, beating MrBeast to get the most YouTube views in 24 hours for a non-music video on the platform. It also became the most-liked trailer on YouTube with 8.4 million likes in less than a day, breaking the record previously held by the first trailer for Avengers: Infinity War, which racked up 4.1 million likes in over 6 years. In comparison, GTA V's trailer had over 92 million views and was the most watched trailer for an action game at the time of GTA 6's trailer reveal. Whereas these views had been amassed over a decade, GTA 6's views overtook GTA 5's in a day.

Related GTA 6: Famous Actors' Characters That Could Return Grand Theft Auto 6 has a chance to bring back some of the series' most famous voices while furthering the stories of their respective characters.

GTA 6 Is Only Coming To Consoles At Launch

This Was Announced Alongside The Game's Reveal Trailer In 2023

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While the official press release that accompanied GTA 6's reveal trailer confirmed that the game would be coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles, it included no mention of a PC release, suggesting that there would be a console-exclusive window for the game. This aligns with the release pattern for Rockstar's other major titles from the past decade, GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2. Both games had console launches quite some time before their PC counterparts, but the PC releases included several bonus features upon launch to make up for the delay.

Mike York, who worked as an animator at Rockstar New England from 2012 to 2017 on GTA 5, GTA Online and Red Dead Redemption 2, took to his YouTube channel York Reacts to offer some insight as to why the PC appears to be snubbed at launch. According to York, the reason why a PC port comes later is because Rockstar wants to prioritize what sells, and tends to focus on developing its games with PlayStation in mind, as PlayStation was seen as the big seller. For GTA 5, for instance, Rockstar prioritized the PS3, and built the Xbox 360 port simultaneously, with a launch on the PS4 and Xbox One just over a year later, with a PC launch eventually coming in 2015.

York then went on to state that one of the main reasons why a PC port will take so long is because of its different architecture and components. This requires a huge amount of testing to be carried out to ensure a quality launch due to the various potential hardware configurations players may have, especially for titles with open worlds known to be as feature-rich and vast as Rockstar's. At least with consoles, each device has one type of set up with a set graphics card, CPU and GPU, so there are fewer variables to worry about in testing.

Related 10 Biggest GTA Online 2.0 Rumors & Predictions That Might Happen GTA Online 2.0 is perhaps just as anticipated as Grand Theft Auto 6, and there are many things that could happen to make it better than ever before.

The PC Market Seems To Be Showing More Signs Of Growth

While The Console Market Seems To Be Stagnating

A recent report by Newzoo (via. PC Gamer) suggests that a delayed PC release may not be the best tactic for GTA 6, however, as the PC games market seemed to grow more than the console games market did last year. According to this report, revenue from PC game sales, subscriptions and microtransactions grew 8.4% over 2022 revenues, whereas these same kind of revenues in the console game space only saw a 0.3% increase.

This growth in PC gaming could be due to publishers continuing to embrace the platform with multiplatform releases, and several console-exclusive titles finally making their way onto PC. With more than half of the sales for Helldivers 2 - a title developed by Arrowhead Game Studios, but published by Sony Interactive Entertainment - coming from the PC market, where the game released alongside its PS5 version this year, it's clear that simultaneous multiplatform releases on consoles and PC could work out better for Rockstar than staggering GTA 6's release across devices.

Fortunately, Rockstar Has Released Most Of Its Games On PC In The Past

Although This Came After A Window Of Console Exclusivity

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PC players shouldn't worry too much, as it's extremely likely that GTA 6 will make its way to the platform. There have been very few exceptions of Rockstar titles that haven't released on PC in the past, and the company seems to be remedying this with notable omissions like 2010's Red Dead Redemption, according to Tez2, a reliable source for Rockstar Games news. This was due to marketing strings found within the Rockstar Launcher's files, and will likely be taken from the port of the game that came to PS4 and Nintendo Switch - but surprised many by skipping PC - last year.

Rockstar has utilized its own launcher on PC over the years, releasing its games with a further exclusive window on the Rockstar Launcher before bringing them to other PC launchers such as Steam or Epic Games Store to provide more options. Therefore, it's extremely unlikely that a title as highly anticipated as GTA 6 will skip the platform, as Rockstar will know it will get even more revenue from it through a similar release pattern, especially with PC gaming's growth.

While it's clear GTA 6 will have a successful launch regardless, as the hype surrounding the game currently makes it seem too big to fail, it's a shame it won't be available for what is a large portion of the gaming audience upon its Fall 2025 release. Of course, it is possible that by releasing a PC version of the game with more official features, better graphics and performance at a later date, Rockstar could encourage players to double-dip with their spending, picking up the title on either PS5 or Xbox Series X/S at launch to avoid spoilers or just out of fear of missing out, before getting the improved version later.

Unfortunately, this kind of approach with Grand Theft Auto 6 would also align with Rockstar's tactics with its various releases of titles such as GTA 5. Following on from its original PS3 and Xbox 360 launch, GTA 5 received an upgraded release on PS4 and Xbox One, but unlike many other games from this generation which received next-gen patches for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S for a smaller uplift fee, or for free, Rockstar controversially released the title again as a full-priced release, encouraging some console players to triple-dip for fear of keeping up to date with content in the GTA Online mode.

Source: York Reacts/YouTube, Newzoo (via. PC Gamer), Tez2