The Real Reason Rockstar Might Delay GTA 6’s PC Release
Back in 2020, Evan Lahti, strategic director at PC Gamer, declared that the PC had essentially won the console wars. That statement feels even more accurate today than it did four years ago. The advantages of the PC platform remain consistent, customization, modding, and nearly endless backward compatibility, but in recent years, it’s also become a prime destination for games that were once exclusive to consoles.
Microsoft essentially conceded before the current console generation even began. Despite Nintendo’s persistent claims to the contrary, it’s still legal to emulate their games on PC. Sony, on the other hand, maintains its PSN subscription model and imposes a six-month to one-year exclusivity window for its biggest releases. While I’m not a fan of it, this approach makes sense, as Sony is betting on the future of its hardware.
But there’s one major outlier that remains frustrating: Rockstar Games. Unlike Sony or Nintendo, Rockstar’s delay in bringing its games to PC doesn’t seem to have the same logical business reasoning.
Consider the wait times for these major Rockstar titles:
- Grand Theft Auto 3: 7 months between console and PC release
- Vice City: 7 months
- San Andreas: 8 months
- Bully: 2 years
- GTA 4: 7 months
- Red Dead Redemption: 14 years, 5 months
- GTA 5: 1 year, 6 months
- Red Dead Redemption 2: 1 year
This kind of delay isn’t unique to Rockstar, though. For a long time, Square Enix adopted a similar approach, despite being a third-party publisher. Titles like Final Fantasy 16 and the FF7 Remakes were tied to timed exclusivity deals with Sony, which in hindsight don’t seem to have justified the potential sales losses. Square Enix appears to be rethinking that strategy now.
However, Rockstar’s delays remain harder to explain. Red Dead Redemption 2 didn’t make its way to PC until a year after its release on PS4 and Xbox. And then there’s Grand Theft Auto 5, which released across two console generations before finally arriving on PC. Perhaps the most frustrating example is the original Red Dead Redemption: we only got it on PC 14 years after its initial launch, and at a premium price of $50. Meanwhile, the underpowered Nintendo Switch managed to get it before we did!
It’s clearly not a technical issue. While porting games isn’t always simple, especially even in today’s console-PC landscape, Rockstar, with its massive resources, shouldn’t struggle to bring its games to PC. As PC Gamer hardware writer Nick Evanson highlighted last December, there’s no legitimate technical reason why the PC version of GTA 6 shouldn’t launch alongside the console version.
Delays from other developers, like Capcom’s seven-month delay with Monster Hunter: World, were more understandable. That was their first major Monster Hunter release on PC, and they had to adjust performance and the interface through patches. But now that Capcom has improved its PC strategy, the next Monster Hunter title is set to launch on PC from day one.
So why is Rockstar still keeping us waiting?
