Last week, we speculated about whether or not Grand Theft Auto 6 will release on PC on the same day as consoles. Most of us predicted that Rockstar will once again wait a year or so after the console release date before dropping the PC version, and I regret to report that we were probably right.
The first GTA 6 trailer, above, only tells us that Rockstar’s next open world crime spree is coming in 2025, with no platforms listed, but in a press release, Take-Two announced that GTA 6 will release on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. There’s no mention of the PC in the press release, which suggests that Rockstar will once again hold the PC version for a later date like it did with Red Dead Redemption 2.
Asked for comment on the status of a PC release, Rockstar told us that all of the information currently available is in the statement.
I was one of the few who thought Rockstar would get with the times and give up on this silly timed console exclusivity game. It feels awfully old-fashioned to keep GTA’s PC audience waiting. It’s a lot of people, including an enormous audience in China that accesses Steam’s international version via VPN, and it’s also a lot of influential people, like the GTA Online roleplayers who’ve been trendsetting on Twitch for years.
But, as evidence that Rockstar would stick to its old ways, others pointed to its past skirmishes with modders (like the Hot Coffee scandal) and its lucrative tradition of getting people to buy games twice. I think they were probably right. Rockstar’s seen some high-level personnel changes in the past decade, but Rockstar’s still Rockstar.
And if any game can get away with getting people to cave and buy a console version, or grit their teeth for a year waiting, it’s GTA. It’s one of the few legacy singleplayer mega-series that feels as big as it did a decade ago. There are over half-a-million views on the trailer. You don’t get that kind of response for anything less than a new Zelda. (Update: Actually, that was generous to Zelda. There are over 20 million views on the GTA 6 trailer now—nothing else compares.)
GTA 6 is over a year away, so it’s possible that Rockstar will decide in the intervening time that, hey, maybe a simultaneous PC release isn’t such a bad idea. Or maybe it will shrink the usual gap between the console and PC releases. But given the precedent, the press release’s total avoidance of the subject of a PC version seems to me like a pretty clear statement that we shouldn’t expect to play GTA 6 on PC in 2025.