At first, it looked like a slap in the face for players waiting for any news from the Rockstar studio. During the big Sony show, we basically saw a recycled trailer for GTA 5, which showed the game exactly the way we remember it from the PlayStation 4 or the PC. In the show, even attentive people found a few graphics bugs and glitches, and many of them asked how it was even possible that Sony allowed something like this to be broadcast.
And so a slap came right from the people back to Rockstar. Their trailer for that “improved” version of GTA 5 for the new generation is perhaps the most negatively scored video on the official PlayStation channel. People made him over 100,000 inches down. The same video on the Rockstar channel is not much better.
One thing is clear to many of us: perfect games take a lot of time. And especially now, in a time of constant procrastination, probably none of us expects some of the game studios to rush into anything. Especially if we remember how the hurried Cyberpunk 2077 turned out with the optimization.
The PlayStation 2 console offered three GTA series games. GTA 5 is available for three series of consoles.
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The truth is that GTA 5 is simply an old game. It was released exclusively in 2013 for the PlayStation 3, and we first saw it in the trailer in October 2011, practically ten years ago. In 2014, the studio transferred it to versions for PlayStation 4 and PC, where the graphical changes associated with the increase in performance of the relevant hardware were quite noticeable. Since then, however, the “basic game” (online mode now aside) has essentially not changed.
Now, eight years later, Rockstar is once again showing us GTA 5, this time optimized for a new generation of consoles. However, the game looks about the same as the PC version in high detail. Some “new” elements, such as a smooth change of character, is also something that has been working on the PC for a long time. Enthusiasm for the “expanded and improved” version thus falls sharply to the ground. Especially if the studio will sell the game at full price.
Let’s face it. Although GTA 5 is undoubtedly a high-quality game, we are already quite annoyed by our return to Los Santos. In this regard, however, “we” means “we, the fans of singleplayer titles.” This brings us to the heart of the problem, which is GTA Online mode. It is he who is most likely to blame for the fact that Rockstar is in no hurry.
Timeline of games from Rockstar (until 2019, the next two years are also empty)
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Imagine you are a big game studio and players are still buying your obsolete game in tens of millions of each year. In addition, you also have an online mode where microtransactions also work well. Where would you go? This is exactly the mood in Rockstar, which is also proud of this: over 150 million copies of GTA 5 have already been sold in total.
Rockstar has it invented very cleverly. It packs the virtual game currency with the copy of the game itself, and often such a package is even more advantageous than just buying those virtual dollars. In fact, players buy the basic game over and over again, because they are accompanied by the microtransaction that interests GTA Online players more. As a result, unused copies of the game accumulate in their account, which Rockstar is happy to include in its statistics.
Rockstar Vs. modificationsOne of the reasons for the dissatisfaction of the gaming community around GTA games is also the prosecution of the creators of various modifications. Rockstar, or rather his ownership company Take Two, quite mercilessly punishes the modders of the games in this series. Apparently they are afraid that successful fashions would distract attention from possible remakes (for more see Take 2 has banned GTA fan modifications). – |
For the past year, for example, GTA 5, including its online content earned Rockstar nearly a billion dollars. The development and release of a possible new part, on the other hand, not only costs money (and a lot, the development of GTA 5 had a budget of $ 265 million), but also discourages current players from further buying microtransactions in the current game. With the announcement of the successor, it will basically become obsolete and people will prefer to look for something new.
At the same time, it is also necessary to give the new game some time to form the player’s paying community. Everything basically means the loss of a significant part of the revenue that would otherwise be generated by the current GTA Online. And in the current situation, Rockstar obviously doesn’t want that.
How to get out of it? Of course, there is a variant that Rockstar will develop the whole new part quietly and then launch it on the market with the least possible distance from the announcement, so that the delay for people used to paying microtransactions online is as small as possible. In fact, there is a general consensus that Rockstar is actually working on a new piece. The question, however, is whether the project is still somewhere in the design phase, or whether it already has a good piece of development behind it.
The fact that the last title released was Red Dead Redemption 2 in the autumn of 2018 also contributes to the whole dissatisfaction with the silence of the studio. Yes, I repeat that the development of a really good game takes time, clouds of time. Hasty things end up forgotten at best, at worst the brand of unfinished games will remain forever.
Rockstar should definitely not be in a hurry – no game studio should be in a hurry with a new game. But at the same time, he should finally be knocked out by the idea that we are all hot for the same game over and over again. We are not. Rockstar fans really deserve better communication. The studio has already noticed this challenge with that cloud of thumbs down in its trailers. It is now up to him to show that he deserves our attention. And by anything other than a round-tripped visit to Los Santos.
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