GTA VI PC Speculation & Discussion

[met.]

9 hours ago, Jason said:

The year later theory mainly just comes from two things

 

1) RDR2 was a year after

 

And I blame the Rockstar Launcher, which most likely delayed in some capacity RDR2 PC. It only released on Steam like a month after so it was all planned.
 

[TagoKG]

IDK how accurate is this but.

https://www.theesa.com/resources/essential-facts-about-the-us-video-game-industry/2025-data/

[Jason]

I've said it for a while now that PC is the biggest non-mobile platform, it's not new information. It doesn't mean an AAA game will sell best on PC, some still sell best on console, but those games are becoming the exception and not the rule.

[TagoKG]

good to see nioh 3 day 1 on PC and MARVEL Tōkon that is funded by sony day 1 one too on pc.

[BS_BlackScout]

On 6/3/2025 at 5:48 PM, TagoKG said:

IDK how accurate is this but.

https://www.theesa.com/resources/essential-facts-about-the-us-video-game-industry/2025-data/

I'm confused about the rightmost graph. Maybe it's an interpretation issue but it almost feels misleading.

Mostly because it doesn't add to 100%. I assume it's due to overlap, people may have a Mobile phone and a PC but then I don't know what I'm supposed to read from it.

Read each bar separately and not in context? Also, Video "Geme".

 

This is also conflicting with things I've seen about Mobile gaming being bigger than the rest, especially in comparison to PC and Console.

At least COD has a lot more players on Mobile than on regular platforms (granted the game has taken a nosedive in quality and consequently players/engagement)

[Jason]

In terms of size it's mobile > PC > console.

 

This isn't new and is well documented. Mobile is predominately dominated by F2P titles, Candy Crush and the like, with mobile versions of AAA games not doing that great. CoD Warzone mobile is shutting down I believe.

 

PC is bigger than Xbox and PS combined, probably Nintendo too, but PC is a bit like mobile in that it's a really wide net, it's not just all AAA single player games, there's tons who play stuff like the Sims who don't play anything else, or PC solitaire and stuff like that. There's also a ton that play esports titles and only those games.

 

When it comes to AAA releases, the type most of us here play whether or it's something like GTA, God of War, TLOU, Cyberpunk, Witcher 4, Elden Ring or whatever console versions have typically sold more copies however in the past several years select games have started selling better on PC, and it's becoming more common. Sales legs seem to be better on PC in general in my experience of looking at this stuff. There's still exceptions, CoD sells better on console, Assassin's Creed, GTA most likely as well, but a lot of others now sell best on PC. Japanese studios now see PC as their primary platform, and their games are now starting to sell best on there.

 

But I would think it's fair to say that for the typical AAA market PC and PS5 are very close in terms of market size, but the difference is PC is growing while console is not.

[BS_BlackScout]

12 minutes ago, Jason said:

...CoD sells better on console...

It's probably different nowadays (or not? Think GamePass) but PC seems to have, at least in 2023, surpassed consoles.

Though at the time of this tweet that would've been COD MWII.

It's one of the main reasons people kept looking at SteamCharts/SteamDB and pointing out how bad it was for COD. Since even if the numbers aren't the same, it clearly indicated a downwards trend for Black Ops 6 after its release (very hard to argue that it didn't decrease on console).

It's a shame that Activision went all coward after COD: Ghosts and hid the in-game per platform player count (the title flopped), they used to be proud of those numbers.

Edited June 5 by BS_BlackScout

[Jason]

I'm surprised by those numbers, tbh. Perhaps they're including Warzone in there as well, that'd make more sense. Black Ops 6 I'd be surprised if it has more players on PC than console. But if it does, that would another game where PC has become the dominant platform.

[Intstringeger]

56 minutes ago, BS_BlackScout said:

I'm confused about the rightmost graph. Maybe it's an interpretation issue but it almost feels misleading.

Mostly because it doesn't add to 100%. I assume it's due to overlap, people may have a Mobile phone and a PC but then I don't know what I'm supposed to read from it.

Read each bar separately and not in context? Also, Video "Geme".

It doesn't add up to 100% because each bar is the percentage of US households that play on those platforms. So if one person plays on mobile, PC, console and VR it's counted in all of them.

[Bizz913]

3 minutes ago, Jason said:

I'm surprised by those numbers, tbh. Perhaps they're including Warzone in there as well, that'd make more sense. Black Ops 6 I'd be surprised if it has more players on PC than console. But if it does, that would another game where PC has become the dominant platform.

Do you think Nvidia Quadro P2000 would support GTA 6 along with 8th gen Core i7?

[Jason]

6 minutes ago, Bizz913 said:

Do you think Nvidia Quadro P2000 would support GTA 6 along with 8th gen Core i7?

 

Going from benchmarks I would guess you would get a very unpleasant experience on that GPU, if it loaded at all.

[Bizz913]

9 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

Going from benchmarks I would guess you would get a very unpleasant experience on that GPU, if it loaded at all.

Well it does run RDR 1, 2 and pCars 3 on almost medium settings so there is that. Pcars 2 and GTA V E and E are fantastic here, not kidding.

[Jason]

RDR2 was made to run on hardware that was considered underpowered in 2013, GTA V E&E situation is not hugely different, and racing games are always really scalable.

 

Going from benchmarks of current-gen only games like Starfield that GPU was struggling to maintain 30fps all on low at 1080p with games. GTA VI will likely be similar or even more demanding, and if it requires raytracing then you're probably out of luck altogether.

[Bizz913]

3 minutes ago, Jason said:

RDR2 was made to run on hardware that was considered underpowered in 2013, GTA V E&E situation is not hugely different, and racing games are always really scalable.

 

Going from benchmarks of current-gen only games like Starfield that GPU was struggling to maintain 30fps all on low at 1080p with games. GTA VI will likely be similar or even more demanding, and if it requires raytracing then you're probably out of luck altogether.

Oh raytracing but not that rasterizer method, we shall wait for it then I guess?

[Shqipëria e Madhe]

i don't want to sound classist or elitist (there's probably better word for this, i just can't think of it), but even if your pc will be able to run the game with all settings on low at 1080p with not even 30 fps, would you want to experience this game like that? 13 years of waiting and playing it this way? this is exactly why i won't be buying series s for this game, instead i'm waiting for the pc version, cos i won't buy a ps5 just to play one game. i know pcs are expensive, especially outside the west, but still i'd rather wait until i can buy something that'll get me ps5 level of performance

[Malibu Club]

3 hours ago, Shqipëria e Madhe said:

i don't want to sound classist or elitist (there's probably better word for this, i just can't think of it), but even if your pc will be able to run the game with all settings on low at 1080p with not even 30 fps, would you want to experience this game like that? 13 years of waiting and playing it this way? this is exactly why i won't be buying series s for this game, instead i'm waiting for the pc version, cos i won't buy a ps5 just to play one game. i know pcs are expensive, especially outside the west, but still i'd rather wait until i can buy something that'll get me ps5 level of performance

Some people just genuinely don't care about that sort of thing somehow. I can't imagine playing it like that either though.

[Moncastler]

4 hours ago, Shqipëria e Madhe said:

i don't want to sound classist or elitist (there's probably better word for this, i just can't think of it), but even if your pc will be able to run the game with all settings on low at 1080p with not even 30 fps, would you want to experience this game like that? 13 years of waiting and playing it this way? this is exactly why i won't be buying series s for this game, instead i'm waiting for the pc version, cos i won't buy a ps5 just to play one game. i know pcs are expensive, especially outside the west, but still i'd rather wait until i can buy something that'll get me ps5 level of performance

Upgrading a PC costs money, especially these days with the GPU market being absolutely awful. Atm there are no good GPUs under 500$, in 2025 you would want to buy something that offers at least 16GB of VRAM, but this limits the choice to:

- RX 6800 / 6800 XT

- RX 7600 XT

- RX 7800 XT

- RX 9060 XT

- RTX 4060 Ti

- RTX 5060 Ti

I would not recommend RDNA2 and RDNA3 GPUs because they have very poor RT (which will be a major thing for VI) and they don't support FSR4 (RDNA3 probably will, but not in the same way as RDNA4). The other 3 GPUs are not that great at 1440p, and NVIDIA's recent 60 series is more like a 50 series... It's not unfeasible to think that these GPUs will play VI at 1080p and 1440p with lots of upscaling and/or visual quality sacrifices. If these sub 500$ GPUs target 1080p, I think there will be many people stuck with a GPU that is enough to do 1080p30 on low. Honestly, between not playing VI and playing it at 1080p30 low, the choice seems crystal clear to me. There's always time to upgrade later and enjoy it properly.

[Moncastler]

Pardon for the double post, but this could potentially be relevant here. On the Xbox PC App it seems that now the whole console library appears, including Xbox Series, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Xbox games.

 

Wonder if this is connected to Microsoft's incoming showcase and if this is a sign that we'll indeed have a Xbox-to-Windows translation layer for all games. Imagine if this somehow becomes a reality and we're able to play the Xbox Series version on day one without the need of a console.

 

I would also consider buying the Xbox version of IV and RDR1 for multiplayer.

Edited June 8 by Moncastler

[Obito Uchiha]

1 hour ago, Moncastler said:

Pardon for the double post, but this could potentially be relevant here. On the Xbox PC App it seems that now the whole console library appears, including Xbox Series, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Xbox games.

 

Wonder if this is connected to Microsoft's incoming showcase and if this is a sign that we'll indeed have a Xbox-to-Windows translation layer for all games. Imagine if this somehow becomes a reality and we're able to play the Xbox Series version on day one without the need of a console.

 

I would also consider buying the Xbox version of IV and RDR1 for multiplayer.

Interesting

[Intstringeger]

4 hours ago, Moncastler said:

Imagine if this somehow becomes a reality and we're able to play the Xbox Series version on day one without the need of a console.

 

[Tez2]

6 hours ago, Moncastler said:

Imagine if this somehow becomes a reality and we're able to play the Xbox Series version on day one without the need of a console.

As cool as this sounds, it'll ultimately be decided on a case-by-case basis, depending on which publishers permit Microsoft to do so. I reckon R* will be one of the publishers who say no.

[met.]

Rockstar having all platforms enjoying their games on day one?
Sure, and I am King Charles

[TagoKG]

xbox anywhere, will R* do it ? 

Edited June 13 by TagoKG

[Xerukal]

If they do, it's very unlikely that it'll be at launch. RDR 1 was on PS Now around the time RDR 2 was coming out, but that was ages ago. 

 

Would be pretty cool if we got some PC-specific info leaks in the near future tbh. 

Edited June 13 by Xerukal

[met.]

I can ensure you that the moment the game releases, people will scrape it whole. We'll know there's a PC version before you can imagine, same that happened with RDR2.
As much as the average guy wants to tell you that the console and PC versions are different... they're simply not lol they're the same software. So there will be left-overs here and there from the PC version.
Obviously Rockstar will go trough some major cleaning but things slip trough all the time.

[Yonnerz]

4 hours ago, met. said:

I can ensure you that the moment the game releases, people will scrape it whole. We'll know there's a PC version before you can imagine, same that happened with RDR2.
As much as the average guy wants to tell you that the console and PC versions are different... they're simply not lol they're the same software. So there will be left-overs here and there from the PC version.
Obviously Rockstar will go trough some major cleaning but things slip trough all the time.

something like this happened with RDR2! version 1.00 (exclusive for PS4) had mexico leftovers (low poly models), but when the PC version arrived R* removed them

[Pankypops]

I just hope there's no forced RT. Too many games doing that nowadays, unnecessarily tanking performance for too few or superficial graphical fidelity.

 

On 5/28/2025 at 2:26 AM, Jason said:

We all balked at the $700 PS5 Pro or the thought of a $600 PS6 but the reality is you can't get anything near a PS5 Pro for $700 in PC land.

 

Meanwhile I know it gets scapegoated a lot, and it does have it's genuine faults, but the Series S runs modern games including GTA VI at something like $250-$300. If you got a brand new $300 PC and tried to run GTA VI it'd probably struggle to load the intro logos.

Um what? You can check PCPartPicker, there's plenty of $750-800 builds that easily outclass current gen consoles in raw performance (maybe not the PS5 Pro, but that's semantics). Sure, it's a slightly larger upfront cost compared to a console, but in the long run, you'll be saving a lot more money, on top of having a much more dynamic platform that has uses beyond just gaming and so forth.

Edited June 17 by Pankypops

[Jason]

No, you can't get anything for PS5 Pro price in PC land that out classes the PS5 Pro. For the money you can get a base PS5 (sub $400) you aren't getting anything that outclasses a base PS5 either as far as I'm aware. This gets benchmarked every year for every generation of consoles going back ages. Consoles are mass produced custom chips sold at a loss, PC's aren't.

 

Feel free to prove me wrong with a PCPartPicker spec that out benchmarks a base console or PS5 Pro when it comes to visual fidelity, resolution and frame rate, I would genuinely love to be wrong but I don't think I am. PC gaming is more expensive than ever while console gaming hasn't jumped that much in price.

 

Unless your point is you can spend DOUBLE the price of a base PS5 and get better performance then yea I'd hope so lol. But then you can buy a PS5 Pro and get better performance and visuals, cause that isn't semantics (???).

[met.]

9 hours ago, Pankypops said:

I just hope there's no forced RT. Too many games doing that nowadays, unnecessarily tanking performance for too few or superficial graphical fidelity.

GTA VI is quite literally built on ray tracing, how will that be superficial in this case?
Besides that being actual false, raytracing boosts fidelity by a mile

[Jason]

I have said before that I think developers jumped the gun on RT, the hardware isn't quite there yet, but it's a significant improvement to visuals. If you want "next-gen" visuals RT is how you get it, we've basically taken rasterised rendering as far as we could.

 

RT completely transforms game development because you don't have to fake lights or pre-bake stuff, you can create the lighting and see the impact of every thing you do in realtime. It's much easier and much quicker, which is a HUGE reason why developers have jumped the gun on it.

 

It also completely transforms reflections which for literal decades in games have been nothing more than cheap tricks or hacks with massive limitations. This has a big impact on the games visuals from lakes, ponds, puddles, windows and just general reflective materials from metals to glossy surfaces like stone etc, they are all able to reflect much more realistically. From a cinematic point of view this actually unlocks a whole host of new options for shooting cinematics and cutscenes that were only previously possible in live-action or pre-rendered stuff - and even then it's cheaper and easier to do cause of what I said above.

 

Raytracing, and later down the line pathtracing, are the future of video game rendering, no ifs or buts. Are developers jumping the gun a bit? Sure, but the improvements aren't superficial.