Rockstar has confirmed that Grand Theft Auto VI is coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
As reported by Video Games Chronicles, the studio came out with a press release shortly after their official trailer. Said press release named both consoles, but notably did not mention Windows, or PC.
It’s an unexpected move, as nearly every Grand Theft Auto title has seen a Windows release. This goes all the way back to the first Grand Theft Auto, which actually released on MS-DOS and Windows in 1997 first, before the PlayStation. And yes, Grand Theft Auto III, which many gamers would consider the proper start of the 3D open world Grand Theft Auto games as we know them, came to Windows in 2002, this time one year after the PlayStation 2 release.
While many gamers closely associate Grand Theft Auto with PlayStation, it arguably is just as much a Windows game as a PlayStation game. All the main titles and DLC saw a Windows release, with the very 1st game in particular a standout collectible in the world of big box PC games.
All the main numbered games saw individual release on Windows, and the same is true of the DLC packs. They even all received a physical release of some kind. The only exception to this has been some collections and remasters of the games, including the much maligned Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition.
Notably enough, Rockstar may be a publisher on Steam, but all the Grand Theft Auto games saw physical release, and none of them were on Steamworks. Impressively and oddly enough, the 2015 release of Grand Theft Auto V came on seven DVDs, as can be seen in this Reddit.
But perhaps Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition shares the reason that Rockstar has decided to pass on a Windows release. It may not be that Rockstar does not want to bring the game to Windows, as much as they don’t want to make that version of the game yet.
Given the trouble that Rockstar had making their latest collection, they may have decided it would be better to partition the different versions of the game, and focus on making the game good enough to release for launch.
That certainly opens up the window for other platforms in the future, too. For example, Rockstar may make a special version of Grand Theft Auto VI for the next Nintendo platform after the Nintendo Switch. Or maybe Rockstar could tweak the PC version to come up with a own cloud streaming version, that can run on Amazon Luna and Nvidia GeForce Now off of their servers. This would be independent of if Microsoft would enable the same for the Xbox Series X|S version of the game.
In any case, this is not the first time that the Windows version came after the console version. So short of Rockstar confirming they have no PC version planned, we can probably expect it to make it to Windows eventually. If you can’t wait, you may already have a platform to play it on anyway.
Grand Theft Auto VI is scheduled for release in 2025.
