Ask yourself this question – does Rockstar like money? Of course the answer is yes. Which begs a follow up question – why limit both potentially the biggest entertainment launch in history and the highest video game production budget of all-time to only current gen consoles? They won’t.
That’s a bold statement and one that is yet to be proven, but rest assured, if you like to bet put all your chips down on GTA V coming to the PC, PS4, and Xbox One – and soon.
GTA V is an absolute achievement of the highest order. To run a game with so many assets and such an incredibly large, free roaming open world on current gen tech is stopping just short of wizardry. But it’s not flawless.
Cinema Blend has combed through a newly leaked, 22-minute, in-game action portion of the game and found some discouraging and unsettling evidence suggesting the current gen consoles may be struggling with the games immensity and complexity.
As evidenced throughout the video, especially starting at the 12:49 mark, we can easily see the Xbox 360 absolutely struggling to keep up at times. The opening intro movie shows blotchy loading of the shadow resolution, as well as shadow and texture pop-in happening in horrendously obvious ways all throughout the video. That’s not to mention that the LOD streaming almost seems to be a skip behind the beat at times, where the game is moving faster than what the hardware can keep up with.
This really should come as no surprise considering the Xbox 360 and PS3 have only 512 MB and 256 MB RAM, respectively; a far cry from present day standards. However, not all is doom and gloom.
Nevertheless, I must confess that I am impressed at how Rockstar was able to squeeze the game onto current gen consoles. The old hags seem to show that they can at least maintain just over 25fps during some of the more hectic and scripted segments. For those of you worried whether or not the frame dropoff is as pervasive in GTA V as it was in GTA IV, you don’t have to worry too much because GTA V appears to run a lot cleaner and smoother.
Even if GTA V manages to run smoothly on current-gen, Rockstar still has millions of reasons to launch the game on next-gen platforms – as in they will make truckloads of additional money. A post on Reddit shows an alleged Pastebin file containing the Xbox 360’s version of the games config file. You can see the image below.
What’s telling is that both PC and Orbis (the name of the PS4’s operating system) are listed as platforms. It’s not uncommon for games on one system to list others internally.
In addition, Sony UK “misspoke” on their Twitter account last month when discussing the games release.
@mrxmas123 GTA V is going to be amazing, especially on the PS4! What other games are you looking forward to playing, Norman?
— Sony UK (@SonyUK) August 27, 2013
Of course they immediately retracted that statement.
Apologies for the typo about GTA V. It's due for release on PS3 on September 17th.
— Sony UK (@SonyUK) August 27, 2013
There are two conclusions one can make from all of this: one, the evidence suggests a next-gen version of the game is coming; and two, the game IS coming to next-gen consoles. All kidding aside, it would be a massive surprise if Rockstar did not re-release a “definitive” version of GTA V on the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Grand Theft Auto V comes out this Tuesday, September 17th.