Does the GTA Series need more competition?

[Grotti Vigilante]

Unfortunately due to some glitches that are sending me back to the thread pages, I can't do a poll on this. Having said that, do you think as fans of Grand Theft Auto that the series needs a bit more competition in the video game market? For many years, GTA has held the crown as the open-world king, and it's become a special part of gaming culture for many of us. However, I feel in recent years that Rockstar have had too much of a free reign on the market of open-world sandbox games of a GTA-esque nature. In other words, there seems to be too few GTA Clones (for lack of a better term) these days. I remember back in the mid 2000s where you not only Grand Theft Auto games, but you it's when the Saints Row series took off, as well as having the True Crime series, the Driver series, The Getaways series, and a few individual titles such as Scarface: The World is Yours, The Godfather video game, Crackdown, and even The Simpsons: Hit and Run. Now the last two might be more obscure in their GTA-like nature, but they've been sometimes regarded as GTA clones too.

 

So with that competition, Rockstar had to keep the quality of their games up to outdo the competition, and for so long they did. When Grand Theft Auto IV came about, it was roughly around the same time as Saints Row 2. Yet it seems to me that recent game developers don't seem to be trying these days. You ask me to name a competitor of GTA V, and I'd have said maybe Sleeping Dogs (a good example of competition). But obviously nobody these days competes with GTA V based solely on the online play and such. Watch Dogs could be argued as a competitor, but in my opinion the games are too low quality. Watch Dogs got boring for me after about half an hour, and I never touched it again. It was the first choice to go when I had to make room for more games on my PS4. Even Watch Dogs: Legion looks like it won't be as good as any potential Grand Theft Auto game, and that's not to say that they need to be better than GTA, but they need to at least give it a run for it's money. If GTA lacks decent competition in future, I fear that the quality will drop based on the fact it's the only one of it's kind.

 

You could argue that GTA will always be on top, and I have no issue with that. But I'd like it to actually keep on earning it's position rather than just having it by default. But what do you all think? Does GTA need more competition to keep the quality up, or am I just too pessimistic about the future of the series? Personally I think a little more competition would be helpful, not only to keep the quality up, but because I'm bored of GTA V now and just want another similar game to keep my occupied while waiting. Let me know your thoughts down below...

[El Penguin Bobo]

Well, yeah, it does, we're just not getting a lot, seeing that Rockstar are STILL developing the next GTA.

 

You could try something like Scarface: The World Is Yours.

Edited August 4, 2019 by El Penguin Bobo

[Lotte]

I would love it SO much if someone would make a game that could compete with Rockstar and GTA in a real way, but I have the feeling that it's probably going to be one hell of a challenge to get a new open world IP going; especially since these games are pretty complicated and also because you'd need to differentiate yourself from GTA in a significant way in addition to making it "as good", though that definition probably varies from person to person. The things I like about GTA and would like to see a competitor improve upon probably aren't exactly the same things anyone else who would be asked would want to see.

 

 

 

 

[KingAJ032304]

On 8/4/2019 at 10:55 PM, Lotte said:

I would love it SO much if someone would make a game that could compete with Rockstar and GTA in a real way, but I have the feeling that it's probably going to be one hell of a challenge to get a new open world IP going; especially since these games are pretty complicated and also because you'd need to differentiate yourself from GTA in a significant way in addition to making it "as good", though that definition probably varies from person to person. The things I like about GTA and would like to see a competitor improve upon probably aren't exactly the same things anyone else who would be asked would want to see.

 

 

 

 

The biggest problem is money. If you were to look at the next gta genre competitor you'll see gta will have AT LEAST 20x more sales than the other series competing against gta. Hell the entire saints row series and AOM has less sales than GTA *IV

Edited Thursday at 06:28 PM by KingAJ032304

[DOUGL4S1]

Absolutelly. The issue is many developers nowadays don't want to make an open-world game and be dubbed a "GTA Clone", so you see series like Watch_Dogs introducing weird and unnecessary features so they can escape that title. I mean, I honestly had hopes in W_D until Legion was announced. And then there's Mafia, that will never compete against GTA again simply because they're both owned by T2, and instead of making an internal competition, T2 would rather put all its money into the GTA series, that is guaranteed to sell (I wouldn't be surprised if Mafia III was botched on purpose to make GTA look better).

 

All we can do now is wait and see what CP77 will do to the open-world genre.

[Kiethblacklion]

I would love to see some competition for GTA. I thought Saint's Row 3 and Mafia 2 were pretty close to rivaling GTA, even Sleeping Dogs was a nice change of pace. 

[Pink Pineapple]

They need competition from a game that doesn't neglect story mode.

[TheSantader25]

R* in the 00s had fo fight because they still weren't this big so other devs could sometimes actually keep up. Even if a game dev actually tried to compete with R* there's no way they could keep up because R* are just miles ahead when it comes to resources. Other companies are now even afraid to release their games around a R* release because of how scared they are when it comes to sales, let alone competition. The only dev that I can see competing with R* are CDPR which are very attached to their "RPG" games and don't quite release games in the same genre. Though it's clear they admire R* and I get a lot of GTA-ish vibes from the way they are marketing Cyberpunk 2077. 

Edited August 5, 2019 by TheSantader25

[Shauny7488]

There used to be a few games that were direct competition, unfortunately they really dont make them any more