A hot potato: Many big games fail to launch when they’re supposed to, delayed as developers realize they need more time to ensure their work doesn’t arrive in a Cyberpunk 2077-like state. Grand Theft Auto VI, one of the most anticipated titles in years, is still set to release in fall 2025. Unfortunately for PC owners, there’s still no word when the PC version will get here.
Take-Two Interactive, the parent of GTA dev Rockstar, lists its future releases in the company’s latest quarterly report, including GTA VI. The release date of fall of 2025 is unchanged, as are the platforms it will be available on at launch: PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
When the GTA VI trailer blew up the internet in December, Rockstar Games posted a press release confirming that the latest entry in the franchise would not be coming to the last-gen PS4 or Xbox One consoles, which isn’t surprising. What was surprising, however, is that only the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S are mentioned in the statement – nothing about a PC version.
Rockstar has a history of doing this sort of thing with the GTA games. It took seven months for GTA 3 to arrive on PC, eight months for San Andreas, eight months for GTA IV, and then there was GTA V, which took almost two years to hit the platform following its console launch. Even Red Dead Redemption 2 took over a year, landing on PS4 and Xbox One in October 2018 before arriving on PC in November 2019.
In May, Mike York, a former developer at Rockstar, told IGN that the reason PC ports come later is because the company wants to prioritize what it sells. “Most of the time, especially in the past, PlayStation was the big seller. PlayStation was the console to have. It sold more than any other console for the most part. Everybody’s playing PlayStation,” York said. The complications in building a PC version for multiple hardware configurations and the testing it involves is a big factor in why PC versions of Rockstar’s titles arrive much later.
Take-Two is refusing to say whether GTA VI is still in its core development stage or close to testing. It’s also been avoiding questions about the lack of a PC version at launch. It undoubtedly will arrive on our favorite platform at some point, but when that will be is anyone’s guess.
