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The biggest question GTA 6 has to answer is: what to do about GTA Online?Let them fight
Let them fight
GTA Online is a perennialSteam chart-topperencompassing a wealth of scripted and spontaneous funtimes, sprinkled across official and unapproved third-party servers. Its offerings range from multiple-part co-op heists and Dr Dre cameos to Just Causey engagements featuring rocket cars and orbital strikes, custom-designed racetracks, amateur photography clubs, clashes between street gangs of green or purple space aliens, and so, so many hacks and cheats.
10 GTA 5 Mods For A Wild Time In Los Santos | Best GTA 5 ModsWatch on YouTube
10 GTA 5 Mods For A Wild Time In Los Santos | Best GTA 5 Mods
It’s a significant money-spinner, too, with in-game microtransactions and a GTA+ subscription service thatrake in hundreds of millions annually, according to such figures that have been divulged. While the main game continues to be a strong seller, GTA Online has long since eclipsed GTA 5 as a topic of discussion and perhaps even as a source of revenue, not least thanks to player communities like the game’s armies of role-players, who have taken Rockstar’s creation in directions the developers never dreamed of. As such, the big question I have ahead ofthe first GTA 6 trailer in Decemberis: how should Rockstar approach straightforward GTA sequels in a world that now contains a thriving GTA MMO? And what on Earth should Rockstar do with GTA Online in the wake of GTA 6?
I’m only starting to think about these questions, as we ramp up to next month’s reveal. Amongst other things, I’ve spent a lot of today trying to puzzle out how much the two projects will be in competition. The obvious route for Rockstar is to keep GTA Online going as a separate experience, rumbling onward with the existing pattern of upgrades and additions, at least until pressure to comprehensively rework the supporting technology becomes irresistible.
GTA Online, after all, isn’t just a collection of modes, maps, characters and skins but a proper world - a sprawling and sociable expanse of West Coast dust and tarmac, baked motorways and chilly mountains, hillside mansions and palm-strewn beachsides, with a history as busy and vivid as that of any vintage Minecraft server. Attempting to “2.0 launch” GTA Online as GTA 6 Online would mean abandoning all of that, because GTA 6 will introduce a new setting - rumoured to be a revamped and modernised Vice City - which will surely be the foundation for its multiplayer features.
There are many things I’m keen to learn about GTA 6, and not just because GTA is a license to print traffic. Another thing Alice0 reminded me of this morning is that, for all those montages of GTA Online playersrunning a taxi serviceor playingScalextric in the sky, the game can be a real grind. Its world remains monotonously in service to the almighty dollar, whether you entertain ambitions of becoming a Los Santos CEO or not - small wonder that they’ve sold so many Shark Cards.
I’m interested to know how Rockstar approach the relationship between microtransactions and grinding right now, where their infamously materialist flagship series is concerned. It’s probably too much to ask that they’ll rein in the monetisation elements. But considerations of that sort come second to the notion that in the decade since GTA 5’s release, GTA has grown from a series of games into an online service that has quietly become the most interesting way to play. In the absence of any actual “GTA killers” (sorry,Saints Row), GTA Online is GTA 6’s greatest rival.
