Grand Theft Auto V Exists
by Craig Getting on October 25, 2011 8:10 AM ESTLooking for information on Rockstar Games? Good luck. As I write this, the company’s website is dominated by a single splash page announcing the existence of Grand Theft Auto V. No further information is included, save the news that a trailer should be released next Wednesday.
It’s been over three years since GTA IV, the franchise’s first entry on current-gen hardware. Rockstar followed it up with two DLC packs, collectively titled Episodes from Liberty City, but has since moved on to other projects: Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, and the forthcoming Max Payne 3.
While it’s not surprising that Rockstar would return to their marquee franchise, it is curious that they’d announce it in the waning years of the current hardware cycle. The previous two numbered entries in the series each released in the first few years of their respective console generations, affording Rockstar the opportunity to improve its tech significantly. Rockstar’s RAGE engine has received some upgrades since GTA IV, but GTA V cannot make the type of leap its predecessors have made if it is handicapped by current hardware.
We'll hopefully have more information next week if Rockstar puts out anything more substantial than a teaser.
Source: Rockstar Games
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Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
Sounds great! Have been waiting for GTA V like a kid is waiting for Christmas. I hope the PC version won't be handicapped because of the console versionsquiksilvr - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
Limited by Xbox 360's hardware. It's no secret that game developers that want to release on multiple consoles tend to shoehorn their games into DVDs instead of Blu Rays. It was one of the things i didn't like about GTA IV: It was just one city. After being spoiled by the best game of all time (GTA: San Andreas) I was expecting expansion, not a revamp of GTA3.Don't get me wrong, GTA IV is a great game with a more tightly wound story. But where are my monster truck runs in the hilly desert? Where is my mountain biking race off the tallest mountain in gaming history? Where is my dogfighting over Area 51? Or my bunny hops over cars? What made San Andreas awesome was that you weren't just limited by the city. If you can imagine ever doing it in real life, it can be done in San Andreas.
Now their solution could be an online download and install, but since there are 360s out there that either have no memory at all or a paltry 4GB, I don't see this happening. So either the textures will take a hit so the game can expand, or GTAV is indeed slated for the next generation of consoles.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
I agree. GTA IV was a great game, the story was really awesome. However, there is nothing after the story. In San Andreas, you could easily spend 6 hours just wandering around and doing all fun little things. All those little, yet entertaining things made SA great.B3an - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
If they wanted they would have just put it on multiple DVD's for the 360. Look at Rage.You both seem to forget the fact that making massive games with loads of vehicles and highly detailed scenery to explore takes... time. Just modelling all the cars alone and texturing them in GTA4 would have took ages, it's far more time consuming than making some square shaped blob with ridiculously low res textures on the PS2.
Miqunator - Friday, November 4, 2011 - link
Exactly my thoughts, I never understood how GTA4 managed to get near perfect reviews all over the Internet when it was clearly inferior to San Andreas in so many ways. I never played it again after finishing the story while I spent hours upon hours messing with the vehicles I had stored in that huge hangar/airstrip in San Andreas. Not sure you can blame it all on hardware either, San Andreas was made for the PS2 but guess focus has gone from real content to getting shiny screenshots.Sequels aren't supposed to remove things a predecessor had but improve and add things right? Maybe we'll see some of these things added back in 5 though...
webmastir - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
i feel like a teenager again hearing this newscan't wait!
piroroadkill - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
That is to say, much bigger, with more stuff to do.Yet keeping the detail and graphical quality of IV, or improving on it.
It'd be a tragedy to hamstring it with hardware from 2005.
Spivonious - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
GTA IV would have been fun if I was 13. As a 29 year-old, I found it to be flat and boring. I got about two hours into the story and turned it off.GeorgeH - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
San Andreas was released in the "waning years" of the PS2 and Xbox (Oct 04/Jun 05, Xbox 360 launched Nov 2005) and was massively better than GTA3 and Vice City. Here's hoping GTAV follows the same pattern.ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
Seeing the likely ship date of GTA V is holiday 2012 or after the Wii U launches presumably the Wii U could be a target platform. We don't know how fast the Wii U actually is, but a half-generation improvement from the PS3 and 360 can still allow Rockstar some breathing room to expand the RAGE engine. At the very least, creating textures with 1080p in mind instead of 720p should provide some benefits.