The big day has finally come, Grand Theft Auto VI has finally been announced and unveiled via a massive trailer which has beaten all of the expected records! The newest behemoth in the series is, as obvious, set in Vice City, featuring absolutely immaculate vibes of the best Vice City has to offer, the craziness of Leonida (Florida) on the universe’s social media, all the pink and strong colours everybody was expecting, and much more!

This week, we celebrate the trailer by looking back and selecting celebratory shots from the community, and shots that loosely represent some of the scenes from the trailer from the community’s lenses – Bolingbroke as the Leonida Correctional Facility, Vespucci Beach as Ocean Beach, the Vinewood sign as the VICE sign at VCIA, Lucia and Jason portrayed in GTA V, and more.

I still cannot believe it’s happened, but it has. Enjoy and join us on our forums for the madness!

Post your photos on GTAForums or use the #GTAOnline / #RedDeadOnline / #RedDeadRedemption2 hashtags on Twitter and you might see your efforts highlighted in future GTANet Snap Saturdays!

The post Snap Saturday: Welcome Back, Vice! appeared first on GTANet.com.

You may have noticed that the Internet, our forums and even the games media have started reporting that GTA VI’s release window may just have been revealed based on new Take-Two future outlook information, and based on history, we can absolutely say that might very well have been the case.

Let’s begin.

A Look Back

Take-Two conference calls, despite being intended for the consumption of financial media and corporate investors, always attract large amounts of attention from the fanbase, especially in the run-up to a potential announcement of a new Rockstar game. Well, this also applies when the news drought sets in, as it happened many times during GTAV and RDR2’s pre-release, and even now with the lack of a GTA VI announcement.

In August 2011, two months prior to GTA V’s announcement, Take-Two held one of these conferences, in which they expected a large increase in their price per share for Fiscal Year 2013.

Now, for some additional context, Fiscal Years aren’t the same as Calendar Years: in corporate finance, a Fiscal Year usually goes from April, to March of the following year – meaning that Take-Two’s Fiscal Year 2025 would go from April 2024, to March 2025.

With that out of the way, in 2011, when Take-Two announced this suspicious increase in their expectations for Fiscal 2013 (April 2012 – May 2013, remember that GTA V was originally slated for Spring 2013), our own Kirsty here at GTANet made some interesting observations that can still be seen via the Web Archive.

• Take-Two had increased their net income expectations for Fiscal 2013 to values only seen with the release of GTA IV – a net income of $2 per share;
• Take-Two’s average dollar per share value at that moment was projected to reach $0.35/share (remember T2 didn’t have GTA V here yet to make this number big), with the releases of LA Noire and Duke Nukem Forever.
• Red Dead Redemption’s release in 2010 had reached $1.06/share as a comparison.

Putting all those numbers into perspective, you can imagine how the sudden increase to $2 per share was suspicious to investors (in a good way) and fans alike. And indeed Kirsty’s analysis was correct.
Two months later in October 2011, GTA V was announced. Without a date, but it seems clear that Take-Two/Rockstar already had something in mind, as is usual in game development – minus delays of course, which did happen.

Throughout the years, these kinds of increases have pretty much always matched a Rockstar release, RDR2 included.

The Now

Take-Two is a much bigger beast than it was in 2011. It has bigger IP, more studios on their roster, and GTA Online exists, which brought their numbers hundreds if not thousands of times up.

Despite this, it’s still very easy to analyse when something is “off”. To this day, Rockstar releases are still the only ones that drive up revenue for Take-Two the most. Sure, they have other games and IP that do well, but not over 2 billion in net revenue well.

Indeed, in today’s earnings press release, Take-Two says it expects net bookings in the range of $5.45 to $5.55 billion for Fiscal 2024 (Apr 2023 – Mar 2024)… and a whopping eight billion for Fiscal 2025 (again, Apr 2024 – Mar 2025). Their net bookings for Fiscal 2023 (ended this March) were of $5.28 billion, much more comparable to their forecast for Fiscal 2024.

Now, that is a major increase of $2.7 billion in just one fiscal year, something that hasn’t been happening even with the ongoing success of GTA Online. Take-Two currently has Judas in the pipeline from the makers of Bioshock, alongside potentially a new Mafia game, but neither of those two games can pump up the numbers that much – they may sell well and may be anticipated IP, but we’re talking a difference of multiple billions in net revenue here.

I’m sure by now you can draw the parallels. This looks incredibly similar to what happened in 2011. Not even releases like Red Dead Redemption drove revenue up as much as, for example, GTA IV did, and GTA V was expected to. Now Take-Two, for the first time in a long time, are expecting a major increase in their net revenue for Fiscal 2025, something that historically only Rockstar releases have done. This is most likely, almost without a doubt, Grand Theft Auto VI.

They expect to sustain the big Fiscal 2025 forecasts all the way to Fiscal 2026, which would imply one of those “groundbreaking titles that (…) will set new standards of quality and success” is expected to continue to sell like hotcakes. Again, most likely GTA VI and/or it’s online component.

Let’s look at the wording as well, this is the same kind of wording Take-Two used to describe Rockstar’s next GTA game, which can be seen in this PCGamer article, which I’ll quote below.

“With development of the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series well underway, the Rockstar Games team is determined to once again set creative benchmarks for the series, our industry, and for all entertainment, just as the label has done with every one of their frontline releases,” said Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick during [September 2022’s] financial update.”

Investors know this just as well, and have noticed it, as Take-Two’s stock skyrocketed after-hours.

Remarks on Delays

Now, of course you might be saying “pfft, it’ll probably be delayed”. Maybe, of course. These are just forecasts, but they are a bigger piece of bread in a world of breadcrumbs – after all, GTA V was delayed too, and the big numbers did mean it was coming.
Many high-profile games have gotten delayed recently, Rockstar does delay most of their game releases, but we don’t know if they’re not going to attempt to go for a different strategy here – announcing when the game is further into development, avoiding delays as much as possible, so on and so forth, in a much different gaming industry landscape than the one in 2012/2013.

We’ll have to wait, but I think there is a lot of fodder here to say… we might be closer than we think to the big announcement if Fiscal 2025 truly is their target, and if it’s potentially coming out in, say… Autumn 2024. Rockstar likes marketing their games, and if this one is as big as it seems to be… they’ll want to talk about it quite a lot, maybe sooner rather than later!

If you’ve skipped to here because you find this too chonky, find a tl;dr by our GTAForums moderator Jason, included in our hype-filled GTA VI speculation thread.

The post Take-Two expecting large Net Bookings increase for Fiscal 2025 appeared first on GTANet.com.

If there’s one thing that the R* community likes to do is speculate, so obviously what dropped today and the details within those social media posts had part of the community feeling like they were going on one of Dax’s trips at least for a bit.

If you haven’t paid attention, let’s break it down, just like Mutt would break down chemicals for your next LSD trip.

Table of Contents

• The Original Tweet
• The Rabbit
• The Follow-Up Tweet
• Fort Myers Gets Rabbit’d IRL
• Closing Remarks

The Original Tweet

At 5 PM GMT, midday EST, Rockstar posted a tweet that showed psychedelic effects based on the new GTA Online update, but seemingly without any rhyme or reason – they just posted those, alongside a Rockstar logo (two even), in a perfectly looping fashion.

To most this is a completely innocent update advertisement tweet, but when the first frame of the tweet (and YouTube video!) is a neon-coloured Rockstar logo, and the tweet doesn’t actually include any direct references to the recently-released GTA Online update (a hashtag, a logo, a name…), other than the YouTube video’s title – this is bound to send parts of the community into a frenzy, especially those who have notifications enabled…

As soon as it was posted, folks on GTAForums and even Twitter/Reddit started dissecting the video, because sure, it was most certainly related to the latest GTA Online content update, but there seemed to be something more to it. For instance, there are exactly six heart beats in the video alongside the psychedelic sounding audio, that only lasted until the middle of the video, where a Rockstar logo blended into the rabbit hole (what the rainbow tunnel is named within the game’s new missions).

You know what the number six means to a lot of the Rockstar community – and that is the next Grand Theft Auto game. For the next hour or so, the community was left wondering just exactly what was going on with Rockstar teasing an update that already had had a teaser and a trailer, why they were making us go through the update’s rabbit hole again, and why the audio sounded so mysterious yet revealing at the same time.

Many have speculated that the Drug Wars Dose missions could give us some sort of reference to the next GTA game (which in my opinion would be a pretty genius thing to do, catch everyone by surprise with a reference to the next game during an acid trip or something similar – after all, all the community’s speculation can sometimes feel like a trip!), so Rockstar posting a video like this certainly didn’t help the rumour mill’s speed!

Some members of GTAForums even went to the effort of looking at the audio spectrogram to look for clues in the distorted audio, and even manipulating the audio in case it was an ARG (alternate reality game), but to no success, so I won’t be posting that specific speculation here, as funny as it was to observe!

The Rabbit

Before we move on to the next tweet that Rockstar made an hour later, let’s go back in time a few days. Since the first post about the new GTA Online content update, Rockstar have been signing off all of their posts and even emails with a little rabbit at the end. This ended up being a reference to one of the First Dose missions, and an obvious reference to being on acid, chasing the proverbial white rabbit whilst on a drug trip, and so on (e.g. Alice in Wonderland); but at the same time, some hawk-eyed community members spotted something – the rabbit is white and has reddish eyes, kind of albino… just like a Florida White Rabbit. I ended up making a small, low-effort graphic for an easier comparison.

So before the following section, people didn’t have much to go on, it’s just a rabbit, commonly associated with psychedelic trips, a reference to Alice in Wonderland (following the white rabbit – the original meaning, not the bad one from the people associated with the first letter at the top of most keyboards), no one had really thought of the Florida White Rabbit, until the follow-up tweet…

The Follow-Up Tweet

Now that the rabbit is out of the way, let’s get into what happened an hour later. While the community was already confused and hyped at what the hell was going on, wildly speculating about that short, few-second clip that R* posted and why it happened (other than advertising the update), they posted another one, but this time, simply promoting some GIF additions to Giphy, to celebrate the release of Los Santos Drug Wars.

Oh no, some people said, this is just something to advertise some GIF’s, right? Well, it just so happens that the community instantly noticed that that one 15 second video wasn’t part of the GIF collection, and the GIF they used as an example had something very particular to it…

Not only it was the the same rabbit from the marketing, it was a GIF of the rabbit’s shape getting chromatically aberrated (the dual colour distortion you see) into pink and blue.

Six heartbeats, pink and blue, and something else in the mix that I’ll cover in the next section, led to the rumour mill spinning out of control on the forums, and even social-media wide, with the original video at the time of writing having more than 3.5 MILLION views on Twitter along with 129K likes, and the YouTube video having 91K views.

At this point, I was seeing comments all over the forums and social media talking about how R* had to be doing it on purpose, how the colours could not be random, plus the whole thing with the mysterious 15-second video and the six heartbeats… and – you know what, I thought, this is most certainly one of the least bonkers things that the R* community has come up with in terms of a potential GTA VI teaser, whether it’s meaningful or not (i.e. whether R* are actually meaning to tease anything or just messing with the community alongside the theme of psychedelic drugs, knowing they’d notice the details).

Some, including myself, have brought up the idea of R* doing an ARG, much like Valve did to advertise Portal 2 (extremely recommended read on the Portal Wiki!), although I personally think it would take a lot more effort to get the entire community together to decipher such complex things.

Eventually, droxcy on the forums came up with something (half as a joke, don’t take the “has to be about GTA6” too literally) that a lot of us had forgotten after being originally posted last Saturday by someone else on the forums…

Fort Myers, Florida Gets Rabbit’d IRL

First of all, a disclaimer: everything from here is just community wild speculation to add context to the reactions to today’s social posts, and because of its timing, it is not necessarily at all anything Rockstar-related. There are many street artists who do stuff like this as a prank, message spreading, or otherwise.

Reported on December 6th, Fort Myers, a city in Florida got “invaded” by a “horde” of mysterious rabbit signs (alternate link for EU users) put up on poles, alongside the regular Christmas decorations. American Venom brought this to the forums’ attention last Saturday, even including a cheeky icon representing the aforementioned LS Drug Wars rabbit. I even half-jokingly said myself “lol imagine if [it] was an actual R* ARG, hundreds of rabbit signs popping up around Florida cities at the same time the GTA Online update drops“.

ABC7 Southwest Florida even posted a video about it last week, speaking to residents, business owners, and showing the bunnies up on the poles. “Christmas is in the air… but so is something else” said one of the reporters – “a metal mystery on First St. and Hendry St., Monroe St., Jackson St., Second St. and just about every other in-between.”, meaning the rabbits were just about everywhere in the downtown area.

In the video, citizens of Fort Myers say they haven’t seen anything of the sort, other than the usual Christmas decorations that are put up at this time of year. More interestingly, after the reporter “fell down the rabbit hole” one citizen who lives downtown alleges they saw the person who put up the rabbit signs, on stilts: “It was the day after Thanksgiving, probably around 10/11 o’clock at night, he was on painter’s stilts“.

According to the video posted about 9 days ago, no one knew who was responsible and the police were investigating, but the city admitted to not being in any sort of urgency to take them down as they were otherwise harmless signs.

Closing Remarks

Obviously the happenings of today brought people back to this situation that happened a couple of weeks ago, because the timing is so close, and dots started being connected, but obviously, as the disclaimer at the top says, this is more in the territory of community speculation just to add context to today’s community craze, more than reporting on factual happenings like the Rockstar tweets including specific details.

Things like these aren’t unheard of for marketing campaigns, so obviously the more conspiratorial and curious have already been thinking on the forums if this could be traced to something, either on Google Maps or IRL… but obviously not everyone is on board with something like this, and at the end of the day, the videos, GIFs and the rabbit are referencing the recently released GTA Online update – the question in the community just is… what if there’s more? The hype train for the next GTA entry is an extraordinarily fast, out of control one, so anything goes when things like these happen, even if they’re meaningless.

And that is exactly what brought the community into ecstasy (or LSD?) today. Meaningful or not, things like this are certainly more fun to report and speculate on than weird fake “leaks” and fake information on shady websites, reddit, or even over on our own forums. Whether it was intentional or not, it’s brought Rockstar big numbers on social media, and the part of the community that is excited for the next game has gotten all perked up again, so we shall see if this is all a big acid trip leading us to a truth, or absolutely nothing.

Join us over in our GTAForums GTA VI section to speculate on all the latest happenings and events.
Join us on Twitter as well.

The post Chasing the White Rabbit: GTA VI Community Goes Down the Speculation Rabbit Hole appeared first on GTANet.com.

Now by ‘loose ends’, I don’t mean a few trivial changes, I’m more so thinking of things that the community has been discussing for some time; significant updates that could really improve the landscape for Rockstar with features that players have been regularly asking for, often vehemently, with “when?” rather than “if”. As such, this wishlist contains some of the most hoped for or ideal announcements, and to me, it’s made up of the kind of things that you’d want to ‘get out of the way’ sooner rather than later; things that would truly close the chapter on two games that first arrived on older generations and will soon make way for what is likely to be one of the biggest launches ever with GTA VI.

Of course, we must always take a second to acknowledge the time and resources these kinds of updates can take. Anything we as players ask for is never going to be easy to just throw together and implement, nor are they decided on at a whim. Regardless, I’ve only included updates here that are as realistic or as logical as possible so it doesn’t sound like we’re asking for the world. To some, they might not be important, and to others they might be the bare minimum we should be expecting, but this article isn’t going to be the first or the last place you’ll read suggestions along this vein any time soon; they’re all pretty obvious, to be honest, but I just wanted to use my little corner of GTANet to truly solidify some hopes for the future and the reasons behind them.

**this article was drafted before the announcement of GTA+ or the Max Payne remakes from Remedy, so you’ll find no reference to anything related to them here as I didn’t have such things on my mind at the time!**

In random order:

Fidelity & Performance modes for RDR2

Something that the re-release of GTAV has brought to centre stage is the potential of “unlocking” RDR2 for new-generation consoles as well. An update that allows the game to take full advantage of the latest hardware and SSDs could be a gamechanger for an open world that already pushes older consoles to their limits. Preferably this would be in the form of a (free?) patch that allows players to download a new-gen-only version, much like Cyberpunk 2077 for example, with togglable menu settings that allow you to switch between high resolution graphics with native 4K or optimised performance for 60FPS.

Now it’s worth acknowledging that releasing enhanced versions of older games isn’t actually the norm for Rockstar, especially when it comes to the biggest names in their catalogue. We’ve had mobile ports yes, and a remaster of LA Noire in recent years, but beyond that resources seem reserved only for special occasions. The Trilogy remasters were in celebration of the 20 year anniversary but were still outsourced, and the GTAV re-release has arrived following the “unprecedented” longevity of GTA Online. GTA IV and Max Payne 3 not releasing beyond older generations and RDR1 never making it to PC are prime examples. RDR2 released a full 2 years before the current consoles arrived on the market, and the game itself turns 4 this year, so it’s quite possible that this kind of thing would never be on the table to begin with. Regardless, an update like this would be truly anticipated amongst the community and wider audience of RDR2 fans and I can only begin to imagine how beautiful the already-stunning open world could look with a natural facelift on current consoles.

The Rockstar Editor for RDR2

Something that continues to surprise is the absence of the Rockstar Editor in RDR2/RDO. A tool that has taken the machinima and virtual photography communities to new depths since it arrived with GTAV, and it is sorely missed out on the frontier. I would go as far as saying that the Rockstar Editor has probably inspired other companies in the industry to lay the foundations of more in-depth photo and video editing tools in their own games to allow the creatives in community to thrive in ways that were usually limited to the PC platform, so it’s omittance from RDR2 is still an odd one. Of course, RDR2 single-player does have its own photo mode which is treasured amongst enthusiasts; perhaps it’s possible it was developed with the intention to replace the Rockstar Editor, as the orbiting camera allows for free movement around the game area in order to take the ideal shot. The only issue is that there is no recording or clip editing capabilities, limiting players to get fancy with their own console record button, or by using mods on PC. Additionally, the photo mode isn’t available at all in Red Dead Online; the two types of purchasable cameras you can carry are only really fun for filters or basic shots as the camera movement is quite restricted around your character. The Rockstar Editor, or an expanded photo mode, would truly be an asset to both single and online play.

Acknowledge Red Dead Online

“Saving” Red Dead Online has been a hot topic of conversation for quite a while, and it’s an endeavour that would require a whole list of its own for a game that has been without a content update since last July. Though we’ve named a performance upgrade and a Rockstar Editor addition separately in this list, there’s all sorts of missions, heists, roles, properties, and quality of life changes desperately needed in Red Dead Online, so there’s not really one individual feature that could “save” it for some. Long-standing players have campaigned and protested, and some have even abandoned the game in regret due to the lack of new content, but beyond speculation, we’re still without official word from Rockstar about the status of Red Dead Online right now and if there are any plans at all for the future. It makes sense that things were put on hold in the lead up to launching GTAV on new-generation consoles, but GTA Online doesn’t appear to be slowing down and development on the next GTA is full steam ahead, so where does this leave Red Dead Online?

As a company, “saving” it might be difficult for them to prioritise when the next major project is upon us; if your entire workforce is primarily focused on a new mainline title in the final years of development, then resources are going to be pretty limited in spite of their size and wealth, but acknowledging Red Dead Online and its community would be priceless to fans. I’m sure they have seen the outcry for communication, but even if they don’t have anything to reveal right now because things are truly in limbo regarding the direction of the game, it doesn’t mean no one is listening, it doesn’t mean no one would be grateful to hear that Rockstar has valued fans’ patience and dedication to the game in its short life. It was quite a kick in the teeth when Red Dead Online was omitted from their annual “thank you to the community” New Year update a few months back, and whether intentional or not, the message was loud and clear that their focus is entirely elsewhere at the moment. Of course, I wouldn’t expect recognition of the hashtag campaigns or anything of the sort, that just isn’t their style and ultimately will never be something they will back down on in my view, but I know they’re capable of acknowledging fans and the future in their own way – they just have to choose to do it.

Continued Fixes & Quality of Life improvements for the GTA Trilogy Definitive Editions

Love or hate them, the Definitive Editions of the classic GTA Trilogy are here to stay, and that means they should continue to receive the attention they deserve. According to the figures, they sold well and have probably been enjoyed by a number of new and returning players to the series, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the road to get there has been successful – there’s still many bugs and glaring art issues and in-continuities that remain unsolved, so it’s anyone’s guess how many patches it could take fix them all. There’s also some small quality of life improvements that would be useful; for example the ability to hide the HUD for screenshots.

It’s not known how long Rockstar plans to continue support for the games, or even if they have taken over in any capacity since the “apology” post-launch. Either way, if we assume that Grove Street Games are still leading the project, they only have a small team of around 20-30 employees so in respect of their work-life balance they do need to be afforded whatever time they require, and the mobile versions that are still unreleased are likely being developed concurrently to any fixes for the other platforms as well. It’s therefore likely going to take a number of months yet to chip away at all the problems, which brings to question why the games were released when they were, but these are issues we’ve discussed at length before elsewhere. For the time being, it seems reasonable to expect additional patches will be confirmed once news about the mobile versions is announced/released, and I can only hope these continue until the games reach their optimum condition.

New-generation GTAV on PC

Last but not least, we have a PC community that would very much like an enhanced version of GTAV of their own. At the very first announcement two years ago, Rockstar did indicate that the new-gen exclusive content would also be arriving on PC. Since then however, the platform has been routinely omitted in every other announcement, so we’re none the wiser regarding specifics. The speculation surrounding this is that a PC version was likely always due to arrive a little later than its console counterparts as it usually takes longer to test and optimise, especially as employees are working from home. The hope is now that an update will arrive in the form of a patch early in the summer, possibly with a new GTA Online update and the patch that is currently in the works to address invite spam.

You might be wondering “but new-gen GTAV already looks like PC!” – well yes, that’s fair in general, but there *are* a few small changes and improvements that are actually performing better on console right now, as shown by Digital Foundry. There’s also other updates PC players should be able to advantage of, such as the UI and lobby access menu changes, the content such as Hao’s Special Works, and any opportunities for increased anti-cheat protections as well.

Until next time, folks…

The post Top 5 things we’d like to see before GTA 6 appeared first on GTANet.com.

In today’s Community Update, Rockstar announced at long last that the next iteration in the GTA series is “well underway”.

Not too surprising you could say, but the confirmation was completely unexpected and boy does it feel good to finally have those words on paper. Throughout the day the community has been absolutely buzzing, and even though it’s early days, there has been an enormous social media response amongst delighted fans and Rockstar developers alike.

Rockstar aren’t quite ready to divulge anything further at the moment, so we don’t have a title yet, a setting or a location, but we definitely have a new GTA in the works! Rejoice!

We’re probably pretty far from a release date and we have SO MANY questions, but join us for speculation and discussion in the GTA VI section of GTAForums as we anticipate what’s next and how exactly Rockstar will deliver a project that will “significantly move beyond” anything they’ve released before…

The post It’s official: the next Grand Theft Auto is in development! appeared first on GTANet.com.

Unfortunately, the article has lead to a little bit of a frenzy on Social Media and our forums; even prompting a response from Jason Schreier, former Kotaku Editor, referencing his dispute with fans about GTA VI being in “early development“. The tweet has since been deleted.

Much has been said on either side of the coin, but here at GTANet we don’t like to rush, and I thought I’d do a little more digging to understand what the scale of these numbers really mean; that’s if they should mean anything at all, to everyday fans like you and I.

The jist of the VentureBeat article and accompanying graph is essentially to show that because the marketing number is higher than all it’s surrounding years, this must mean that Take-Two are expecting to spend a lot that year to market a product. However, if you read some of the descriptions in the report, these numbers are titled as “minimum contractual obligations and commitments“. In other words, they’re projecting these costs will be the minimum they have to spend for whatever support is required of them as a parent company.

If you look at the last few years, these numbers increase by quite a bit annually. If you couple this with the fact that Take-Two said only last week that they have 93 titles planned over the next 5 years, it’s no wonder their obligations are growing and could be especially large when sequels are planned for the upcoming next-generation of consoles. It’s very easy for our eyes to focus on a year that has a big number and think of GTA, but we must take into account that Take-Two does own other franchises as well, including Mafia, Bioshock, Borderlands and NBA 2k.

What is far more interesting than my paint job above is looking back at what they actually spent on marketing in the past, especially during the release of Red Dead Redemption 2. The report tells us marketing spending had an increase of $135 million that year, when the previous year had a saving of $29 million. If you look at the actual numbers themselves, they are lot bigger than any of the numbers in the projected “commitments”, as well, with last year almost topping $400 million in total.

So in essence, these numbers will show you that they overspend, or make savings, according to what is needed. These numbers will show you that, whatever numbers the aforementioned “commitments” show, they aren’t actually set in stone or a very good indicator to us fans of what could possibly happen in the future. Could it mean Grand Theft Auto VI is releasing in 2023 or 2024? Of course it could, anything is possible and it seems entirely plausible since COVID-19 could be impacting production, but these specific numbers speak to investors and shareholders of a two billion dollar company, and they aren’t meant for us to make predictions or announcements from for a specific game.

Another factor to consider is that Grand Theft Auto V reportedly had a $265 million budget, with $128 million being used for marketing. If you prefer to take this $89 million number at face value for the year of 2023-2024, then it almost seems like chump change for a year that could have a possible successor to the the second best selling game ever.

Sources: Take2Games.com

—

Update 27th May 2020

It looks as though Take-Two themselves have clarified the recent discussion by confirming to GamesIndustry.biz that the marketing numbers floating around are indeed their contractual commitments as described, not their internal studios and thus, not Grand Theft Auto VI. See below for a quote from their article. Thanks to yolobigman for the tip-off.

A Take-Two representative told GamesIndustry.biz that the table in the 10-K reflects marketing commitments made to third-party companies. As Rockstar is an internal Take-Two studio, that undermines the notion that the reported marketing commitments would be related to the next Grand Theft Auto.

GamesIndustry.biz

The post Great Expectations: Why You Shouldn’t Make Predictions from Take-Two Finances appeared first on GTANet.com.

This follows a tumultuous period following the release of RDR2 about the unfortunate reality of crunch time and toxic environments in the games development industry, and the effects it has on employees’ health.

The current and ex-developers apparently confirmed to Kotaku that Rockstar have actively been working to ensure employee wellbeing is their top priority, encouraging “flexitime” so developers have more choice over their hours, “slowing production” to avoid the need for overtime, and getting rid of “bad eggs” in management to encourage cohesion within their teams.

I can only remark here that improved working conditions for developers can only be a positive thing. They’re responsible for every movement we make in these virtual worlds, from the physical effects to the beautiful art, and though many of them will remain nameless to the average player, their hard graft and dedication is the beating heart of our favourite video games.

Alongside this news, said current and ex-developers have also apparently revealed some insight into the next Rockstar project, which is stated to be a new instalment in the Grand Theft Auto series. As you can see, we’re also told this project, likely GTA VI, is meant to be in “early development”, and that they may scale things back to include a “moderately sized release” at the beginning to give themselves more time to develop it on a bigger scale over time, instead of before it releases.

As far as assessing what these statements can mean for the GTA series and GTA VI… well it depends if you take them at face value as cold hard facts, or insightful wisdom. Could it mean we’re still 2-4 years away from a new game? Could it mean a smaller map on release with the return of story DLC as expansions?

Jason Schreier is a knowledgeable insider and you can trust in his credibility, but I’m not personally convinced that such information would be revealed first to fans from the words of a journalist. We know that Rockstar cares most about pulling off announcements on their own terms, that is; only when they’re ready and only on their own platforms. There’s no excuse to continue hounding them with excessive and relentless requests for GTA VI information on their Social Media channels, but I would still believe in the plausibility of today’s article being a smokescreen, a red herring, or a subliminal way of saying “sit down and give yourself chance to expect the unexpected”.

Time will certainly tell…

Read the full article on Kotaku and join the discussion on GTAForums!

featured image snapped by KarimNTerr

The post Kotaku: Rockstar Devs Discuss Working Conditions + “GTA 6” Tidbits appeared first on GTANet.com.

With nearly 100,000 cumulative posts on GTA 6, you could be wondering how we can talk for England about “nothing”, but GTA is made in Scotland, so it is in fact quite easy.

Here we thought we’d “sound off” with our own opinions about what could be heading our way. Join us in the GTA 6 Forum or on Twitter to add your own into the mix.

Location

Where do you think R* could take us next?

uNi: Everyone seems to be rooting for Vice City, and although that sounds likely to happen, I think both current tech and R* experience would allow us to a broader map. Either re-imaging VC bigger than it was in past titles or include more locations. I’m hoping for the latest, whatever the main city ends up to be.

Spider-Vice: A world like the one in Ubisoft’s The Crew could be a great inspiration. Reduce the distance between states but have several cities coexist with some filler in the middle. It seems like something that people would still like – main GTA cities then a filler sorta like what Blaine County was in GTA V.

Kirsty: I feel like we’re going to see a size and density like no other for GTA VI. We’ve always had multiple “locations” within each map as Rockstar have evolved, but the vastly different north and south regions in GTAV and then the completely separate map of Guarma in RDR2 only tells me that we’re heading further than we’ve ever experienced. A lot of fans are desperate to see Vice City re-created in the modern era, and spreading things out to include a New Orleans style city to the west and the island of Cuba to the south, like a modern RDR2, it could be just perfect. I’d love to see Vice City again but I’m not 100% sold yet on why it’s supposedly so likely. What about San Fierro and Las Venturas? On a personal level, I’m ready for Rockstar to write some new history in an all new gritty city.

Era

What timeline do you think GTA VI will be set in?

uNi: People are expecting to see a return to the 80s in case it is Vice City, and I wouldn’t mind that but I see no reason it wouldn’t work in a modern setting. As for personal preference I’d like to see their take on near future, think it could work well, their take on America.

Spider-Vice: VC in a modern setting would definitely work but there isn’t much in the way of drug smuggling and such happening nowadays like there was in the 80s, not to mention all the movie inspirations. I feel like they would have to focus in other businesses and such in a modern era VC. A parody of the Ultra Music Festival or something would be funny to see. Regardless this is Rockstar so they could shift reality however they wanted, could be a reimagined current-era Miami for all we know…

Kirsty: There’s something more “raw” that a game set in the past could offer us. I don’t see us going to the 80s again though, as much as I love the music. The 60s or 70s could offer us something dark, but we’ve had the mafia. The prohibition era of the 20s might be a new take on that. I would personally prefer the game to have just a chapter or two set in the past, instead of the whole thing, there’s just too much fun to have parodying modern society. The continuity of GTA Online depends on it, IMO.

Protagonist

What do you want the next protagonist(s) to be like?

uNi: Not to bothered, R* usually does a pretty good with their main characters. That said would not mind to see their take on a female protagonist, Sadie turned out great.

Spider-Vice: Not too bothered either. Could be either male or female, non-binary, whatever fits the era and their story. I do think Rockstar could try taking some risks if it’s a modern-day game, and it would be very interesting to see a female character.

Kirsty: Female-identifying. I just think it’s time.

Platform

What platform(s) do you think it will release on?

uNi: On the PlayStation5 first, then simultaneously on PC and Xbox series X.

Spider-Vice: I feel like this time around Rockstar isn’t going to limit themselves by releasing on the current generation. RDR2 seems to have some signs that they’re pumping things up to the max with the RAGE engine, so I’d expect we’ll see something truly spectacular but only for next gen. It really depends… They could just sell extra eye candy on next gen as the ultimate version and still release on current gen I suppose. As for a release – PS5 and Xbox Series X simultaneously first, then PC a few months later. GTA no longer needs large gaps between console and PC, as RDR2 didn’t.

Kirsty: I don’t think Rockstar are about to omit any platforms, so “all of the above”? GTA V still looks glorious on console, RDR2 looks even better, and of course PC trumps everything, so I can only imagine the scale of detail that GTA VI will have on the upcoming new generations.

Online

What do you think multiplayer will be like?

uNi: Pretty much the same, it is not my favourite take on multiplayer but seems to do well with the community.

Spider-Vice: Depends on what they do with the single player. If there’s passing time like RDR2 (prologue vs epilogue), they could make it so you could choose in which era to play, or play in both simultaneously but with different fortunes and assets, and even characters. Would double the progression possibilities. Agreed that it will likely still be called GTA Online and become its own big thing, maybe you would even be able to switch between both versions of GTA Online (Battlefield games for example let you select which Battlefield game to play within another’s menu).

Kirsty: A bigger and even wilder GTA Online, pretty much the same formula but the limitations of the past removed, and hopefully lots of feedback from the community taken into consideration. I think it’ll keep the same name and just keep expanding with the franchise, meaning we can play across each game until we reach the limit of the platform, kinda like how some GTAO content eventually stopped coming to old-gen consoles and only current-gen got them. Since we’re close to a new generation, a similar format might come into play.

Announcement & Release

When do we think R* could announce and release GTA VI?

uNi: It feels like we should had gotten one earlier in the year but with the COVID-19 deal, everything seems to being placed on hold or pushed back. Although it is one of the most expects games, people need to understand it is also  a business, and yes they could announced it but then there’s the pressure to commit to a release and further push backs, those have costs in the real word. 

Spider-Vice: Definitely sounds plausible that we might get something this year. Rockstar even teased “a few surprises” in their 2020 opening post, but I think the pandemic has pushed back all kinds of plans. They could still pull it off somehow, so we’ll see. I think it’ll be even more simple than GTA V’s. Imagine Rockstar dropping a “VI” on Twitter and saying nothing for days or even a week. Ha!

Kirsty: I feel like we’re going to get an official “in development” announcement sometime this year, and then I would bet on a release date later down the line for 2022, with room to push it back to 2023 if they need it. GTA V will be 10 years old at that point, so it won’t only be fans asking what’s next for the company. Though the current unfortunate COVID-19 situation could push an announcement into 2021.

Leaks

Do you believe in any of the “leaks” about GTA VI?

uNi: No. There are a few infos around that do sound credible, but we won’t be able to verify them until we know more about the game, whenever that is. 99% of the info circulating at the moment is just plain ridiculous and made up.

Spider-Vice: The Project Americas “leak” that surfaced would be a very interesting take on GTA and it could have some level of plausibility (or even truth who knows?) to it. I think we will definitely have multiple cities, and South America is a setting Rockstar could explore in a pretty neat way.

Kirsty: Everything and nothing, just for the funsies.

Until next time, folks…

The post Sound Off: GTA VI Speculation appeared first on GTANet.com.

Grand Theft Auto IV: “Things Will Be Different” (Released March 29, 2007)

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Trailer #1 (Released August 20, 2004)

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Trailer #1 (Released August 27, 2002)

Grand Theft Auto III Official Trailer (Released September 21, 2001)

The post Historic First Trailers: A Look Back appeared first on GTANet.com.

Source: GamesRadar

The post GTA VI in Next Month’s PLAY Issue appeared first on GTANet.com.