Ex-Rockstar dev says GTA 6 won't launch until "100% perfect" - it's got no competition

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In brief: If you've been anxiously drumming your fingers in anticipation of the next chapter in Rockstar's iconic crime saga, you might have to keep drumming for a bit longer. Former Rockstar developer Obbe Vermeij has hinted that, while GTA 6 is targeting a 2025 release, some factors remain outside of the studio's control.

Vermeij was a key figure at Rockstar North during its heyday, serving as technical director through the development of iconic titles like GTA 3 and GTA 4. He's since moved on but still keeps a watchful eye on his former studio. According to him, Rockstar won't release GTA 6 until they're completely satisfied with the game, even if that means pushing back the release date.

"The decision to delay GTA 4 was made four months or so before the original release date," Vermeij revealed. "Any further and it's hard to make the call. Rockstar is probably not in a position to determine whether they will hit 2025 until May-ish."

Vermeij then dove into the reasons GTA 4 was delayed, citing buggy code, missions that needed more time, and performance issues on the PlayStation 3 as the primary culprits. He added that the game simply wasn't ready at the time, and releasing it would have been disastrous.

"Delaying is almost always the right option IMO," he quips.

Naturally, GTA 6 is expected to be far more ambitious than GTA 4, meaning extensive polishing will be required. But as Vermeij explains, Rockstar isn't under pressure to rush its release.

"GTA 6 will sell for 10+ years and there is no competition to worry about. They are not going to release the game until they're 100% happy with it. No matter what it said in the trailer."

We've been waiting for GTA 6 for years now, so what's a few more months, right? Unfortunately, Vermeij hinted that PC gamers might be in for a much longer wait. When asked about the PC version's release timing, he cheekily responded, "2027 for you, I'm afraid." Yikes! Let's hope that was just a joke.

At the end of the day, Vermeij is a former insider offering speculation based on his own experience. Any actual decision to delay will ultimately come from the top at Rockstar and its parent company, Take-Two.

It's worth noting that back in May, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick was "highly confident" in GTA 6's targeted release date of fall 2025, despite Rockstar's "quest for perfection." Hopefully, this means the gap between the console and PC releases won't be uncomfortably wide.

Vermeij also touched on the potential performance challenges posed by the underpowered Xbox Series S. He suggested that the gap between Microsoft's entry-level console and Sony's PS5 Pro could create issues. Ideally, GTA 6 would run at 30fps on the Series S, Series X, and base PS5, with the Pro model offering a smoother 60fps experience. However, optimizing for the Series S's modest specs is likely going to be tough.

"Series S is a headache for devs for sure," he stated.

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Ex-Rockstar dev says GTA 6 won't launch until "100% perfect" – it's got no competition

 
I hope they bring more single player content to GTA6. GTAV was long but it was really good and I would have loved more story content from those characters. GTA online is a lot of fun, but it isn't a substitute for a quality single player experience.
 
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I cant say I'm interested in this much at all. GTA Vs story was fun; if a bit bland comapred to IV, but with rockstar's behavior and their comments on trying to "sanitize" their comedy to avoid offending people (in a game that is named after a felony and features constant murder, dropping of slurs, drug use, and every other criminal behavior you can imagine) tells me this is gonna be yet another boring globalized product of Blackrock/vanguard investment.

I'm sure its gonna sell tens of millions, because GTA , even if it was a flaming turd that gave you gonaherphasyphillis it would be game of the year.
yRaz said:
I hope they bring more single player content to GTA6. GTAV was long but it was really good and I would have loved more story content from those characters. GTA online is a lot of fun, but it isn't a substitute for a quality single player experience.
Click to expand...
Why would they do that? single player content doesnt make anywhere near the money and requires tons more work then the multiplayer grind slop. They have no reason to do so.
 
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Well it's not going to be perfect.
You would think with better engines, and tools within, plus some automated tools for checking flow/schemas it would get easier.
Think studios used to have armies of play testers at one time, then bean counters came along and said get it out and patch as needed

When younger one of my hobbies was designing games for my C64, never programmed them as that seemed liked the boring part, even back then knew , fine tuning could be just as long . Some of the star programmers on C64, Spectrum 48 must of had incredible stamina , to pump a great games out in a few months , probably 12/14 hour days for weeks on end
 
yRaz said:
I hope they bring more single player content to GTA6. GTAV was long but it was really good and I would have loved more story content from those characters. GTA online is a lot of fun, but it isn't a substitute for a quality single player experience.
Click to expand...
How much money has single player made them vs the infinite money printing machine that GTA online is?
I'd expect a heavy focus on the online component.
 
Another reason why I haven't bothered to upgrade my pc in several years. The older I've got, the more I've realized as much as I love building computers, its just never been the superior platform in most instances. At the end of the day, game engines are calibrated for console hardware (in 98% cases). It's like getting an M3 but you work remote and are a couch potato.
 
Starscream07 said:
Another reason why I haven't bothered to upgrade my pc in several years. The older I've got, the more I've realized as much as I love building computers, its just never been the superior platform in most instances. At the end of the day, game engines are calibrated for console hardware (in 98% cases). It's like getting an M3 but you work remote and are a couch potato.
Click to expand...
Imo that's never been less true than it is now.

We seem to have gone through several eras. The earliest of which where consoles had unique hardware that simply didn't have counterparts on the PC, think of the days when Sega was still in the hardware business.

Next up was basically Sega disappearing and Sony/MS starting to battle it out with PC games being ported to the consoles. Great times for both sides, although PCs were ahead in graphical quality by a landslide.

After that PC gamers were starting to get shafted. Development was console first with extremely poorly performing ports for the PC often with awkward controls because they were optimized for a gamepad. PCs were the after thought, extra income for minimal effort. (Probably part of why WoW and some esport games got so big. They were made for PC and the player base ended up being concentrated there)

Then we finally get to somewhat modern times with the PC ports getting decent. Turns out better ports result in better sales.

Finally we're in the golden Era imo. The PCs and consoles barely differ in hardware making cross platform easy and any developer would basically be a fool not to release on PC. Both MS and Sony realised this and have put an end to their exclusives. Whatever comes out on a console will come to PC. Sometimes the ports are a bit lazy resulting in unusually high system requirements.
Downside is that hardware prices have gotten silly, but if you settle for console like settings it's still affordable.

We'll see what the next era is, streaming from the cloud? I hope not.
Lazy ports again heavily relying on AI upscaling and framegen this time? I hope not, but the first signs are starting to appear.

-----

Well that ended up being long and ranty.
But basically if you get something like a AMD Ryzen 5 5700 X3D, 32GB of RAM and a 7900 GRE or NVIDIA 4070 (ti, super) what isn't superior to the console?
You can run any game at settings higher than the consoles. You can run far more games as the PCs have catalogue is immense and on top of that you can emulate basically any game not natively available (with very few exceptions).

In what aspect would a console be the better choice nowadays if price isn't part of the consideration?
 
Axeia said:
Imo that's never been less true than it is now.

We seem to have gone through several eras. The earliest of which where consoles had unique hardware that simply didn't have counterparts on the PC, think of the days when Sega was still in the hardware business.

Next up was basically Sega disappearing and Sony/MS starting to battle it out with PC games being ported to the consoles. Great times for both sides, although PCs were ahead in graphical quality by a landslide.

After that PC gamers were starting to get shafted. Development was console first with extremely poorly performing ports for the PC often with awkward controls because they were optimized for a gamepad. PCs were the after thought, extra income for minimal effort. (Probably part of why WoW and some esport games got so big. They were made for PC and the player base ended up being concentrated there)

Then we finally get to somewhat modern times with the PC ports getting decent. Turns out better ports result in better sales.

Finally we're in the golden Era imo. The PCs and consoles barely differ in hardware making cross platform easy and any developer would basically be a fool not to release on PC. Both MS and Sony realised this and have put an end to their exclusives. Whatever comes out on a console will come to PC. Sometimes the ports are a bit lazy resulting in unusually high system requirements.
Downside is that hardware prices have gotten silly, but if you settle for console like settings it's still affordable.

We'll see what the next era is, streaming from the cloud? I hope not.
Lazy ports again heavily relying on AI upscaling and framegen this time? I hope not, but the first signs are starting to appear.

-----

Well that ended up being long and ranty.
But basically if you get something like a AMD Ryzen 5 5700 X3D, 32GB of RAM and a 7900 GRE or NVIDIA 4070 (ti, super) what isn't superior to the console?
You can run any game at settings higher than the consoles. You can run far more games as the PCs have catalogue is immense and on top of that you can emulate basically any game not natively available (with very few exceptions).

In what aspect would a console be the better choice nowadays if price isn't part of the consideration?
Click to expand...
I appreciate the take and thinking back, game release on PC has always been a major issue. But despite the fact that its gotten easier to port the games over, I struggle to understand why devs still do not prioritize PC. Ignoring the obvious fact that a lot of PS exclusives take 2 years to port over the same copy and R* still pushing PC version release out even later just annoys me the older I've got.

I think I personally have simply chosen to refuse to wait nearly 2 years only to essentially play the game at marginally better graphics for the price I would pay. I understand its always been a luxury but looking at it the other way around, I think the proposition for console gaming has never been better.
 
Starscream07 said:
I appreciate the take and thinking back, game release on PC has always been a major issue. But despite the fact that its gotten easier to port the games over, I struggle to understand why devs still do not prioritize PC. Ignoring the obvious fact that a lot of PS exclusives take 2 years to port over the same copy and R* still pushing PC version release out even later just annoys me the older I've got.

I think I personally have simply chosen to refuse to wait nearly 2 years only to essentially play the game at marginally better graphics for the price I would pay. I understand its always been a luxury but looking at it the other way around, I think the proposition for console gaming has never been better.
Click to expand...
Sony has stated it wants to improve in that area although I'm having trouble finding it back other a tweet from Sony's president.
Microsoft afaik has pledged same day releases at some point (can't find that back).

So the only arguments for console at the moment seem to be:
- Price
- Early access to certain PS5 titles
- Ease of use (always found that an odd one, PCs aren't hard to use and downloading patches etc are part of the course on consoles nowadays)

In every other regard PCs offer more and price is relative, if you get a used PC and are happy to run at console like settings it's only a little bit more expensive than the PS5. Games tend to be cheaper to purchase and no subscription service is required.

--

As for why PCs aren't prioritized, for Sony it helps with console sales. For other developers it's easier to just launch and see what happens. Any bugs arising from varied hardware can be patched later.
Optimizing performance is only worth it if the amount of work put into it results in so many more sales it's worth the time.
 
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