There’s really only one reason for Rockstar to release Grand Theft Auto 6 later on PC Hallie Frederick | usagoldmines.com

Again in 2020, PC Gamer strategic director Evan Lahti wrote that PC won the console war, and that evaluation feels extra true now than it did 4 years in the past. Our platform of selection has the identical benefits it is at all times had⁠—customization, modding, virtually infinite backwards compatibility⁠—however in recent times we have additionally turn out to be a dragnet for previously console unique video games.

Microsoft threw in the towel earlier than the beginning of our present console era, and regardless of Nintendo’s vociferous insistence to the contrary, you may nonetheless legally emulate your video games on PC. Sony nonetheless pushes its goofy PSN requirement and a six month to 1 12 months exclusivity window on its juiciest releases, however that technique is smart⁠—I do not prefer it, however it strains up with Sony betting its gaming future on its {hardware}⁠.

There may be one massive thorn remaining on the console exclusivity entrance, although, and it is all of the extra aggravating as a result of it would not actually make sense the best way Sony or Nintendo’s protectiveness does: Why can we at all times have to attend so goddamn lengthy for Rockstar video games?

Make it make sense

Grand Theft Auto 3: 7 months between console and PC launch
Vice Metropolis: 7 months
San Andreas: 8 months
Bully: 2 years
GTA 4: 7 months
Crimson Lifeless Redemption: 14 years, 5 months
GTA 5: 1 12 months, 6 months
RDR2: 1 12 months

Sq. Enix was like this for a very long time as properly, regardless of being a 3rd get together writer. Closing Fantasy 16 and the FF7 remakes can at the least be defined as failed bets: Squeenix took timed exclusivity deals with Sony that in the end don’t appear to have justified the lost sales, and the JRPG large appears to be like to be reconsidering that strategy transferring ahead.

There is not any such easy, rapid reply for why Crimson Lifeless Redemption 2 got here to PC a full 12 months after PS4 and Xbox, or why Grand Theft Auto 5 graced two separate console generations earlier than arriving on PC. The worst, for my cash, is the unique Crimson Lifeless Redemption: We’ll lastly have it on our platform of selection on the finish of this month with a $50 price ticket, 14 years after its preliminary launch. The Nintendo Change, a console working on early 2010s pill know-how, bought RDR1 earlier than we did!

Rockstar’s PC observe document has solely gotten worse over time.

It is not a technical drawback. Porting a videogame is not nothing, even within the period of consoles which can be simply specialised PCs. However for a corporation of Rockstar’s measurement and sources, I’ve bother believing a PC port for one in all its video games is something aside from a routine train. As PCG {hardware} author Nick Evanson identified final December: There’s no technical reason Rockstar can give for why a PC version of GTA 6 isn’t arriving with the console release.

It was irritating, although extra comprehensible, when Japanese sport developer Capcom took an additional seven months to deliver Monster Hunter: World to PC in 2018. World was the first-ever Monster Hunter on PC (outdoors an Asia-only MMO spin-off), and it took a number of months of patches for Capcom to get the interface and efficiency proper. The studio’s method higher at PC now—and would you have a look at that, the following Monster Hunter is gonna release on PC day one.

And but, Rockstar’s PC observe document has solely gotten worse over time. It solely took half a 12 months for every entry of the GTA 3 trilogy to make the bounce from PS2 to PC at a time when PC ports of massive console video games weren’t a assure. Distinction that with the year-plus delays on GTA 5 and RDR 2. The 14-year watch for RDR 1, in the meantime, feels virtually spiteful. A child born on the day Crimson Lifeless Redemption launched is now sufficiently old to trick their dad and mom into letting them play this PC port as a result of it is “literary and historic and stuff.”

On the time of writing, Rockstar hasn’t even confirmed that GTA 6 will launch on PC in any respect. With no clear clarification forthcoming, probably the most logical conclusion is a boring one: Rockstar banks on a second income bump from its video games’ PC releases, just a little afterburner of revenue that features no scarcity of PC-favoring gamers who purchase the sport twice.

(Image credit: Rockstar)

That is savvy revenue maximization from Rockstar, however it’s additionally an alienating, insulting stance towards PC avid gamers that would damage the studio in the long term. In 2023 PC gaming’s overall revenue grew 8% whereas consoles stagnated at 0.5% progress. Consoles nonetheless maintain a bigger market share general, however a big chunk of its 28% is the Nintendo’s Change (a console Rockstar doesn’t do enterprise on) in addition to the surprisingly giant variety of avid gamers nonetheless clinging to their PS4s (and the 5 or so with Xbox Ones connected).

If that pattern continues⁠—Sony’s new $700 PS5 and gradual sport output makes me suppose it can—it more and more appears to be like like Rockstar is hitching its wagon to the slower horse. Whereas that will not stop Grand Theft Auto 6 from making a mint and a half, someday it may lead to one thing much like Sq. Enix’s present woes: Its juggernaut Closing Fantasy sequence’ new mainline entry hamstrung by an exclusivity interval that did not make a the large splash Sq. imagined and a staggered PC port that could not make a dent.

Rockstar actually has the chance to cease snubbing PC gamers⁠—an enormous market that ought to be no developer’s afterthought⁠—earlier than that occurs, however when has long-term progress and stability ever been prioritized over short-term wins within the video games business? Given the inherent inertia of an operation the dimensions of Rockstar, GTA 6’s PC launch plan is probably going set in stone. Except, in fact, Sam Houser has some type of A Christmas Carol change of coronary heart this vacation season—you by no means know!