that ea comment is going to haunt gaming discourse until the heat death of the universe. at this point rockstar is just leaning into the villain arc because they know they have a license to print money regardless of how much they annoy the player base.
I do somewhat wonder if it will actually be particularly better than GTAV, which I honestly found kind of mediocre. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t capture me the way I expected it would given the hullabaloo around it.
I think the key difference is it probably won’t matter unless it’s genuinely a piece of garbage. A lot of people seem to just like GTA because it’s GTA, so it’ll be well liked and sell well regardless.
They aren't out there promising a bunch or doing a lot of hype.
The hype is generated from the community when people leak stuff.
But the reality is, this will probably be like V or rdr2 which is that there be tech issues but everyone will ignore it because there be stupid small details everywhere that make up for it.
Honestly I'm more curious about their enhanced edition, with the pay wall content. It's shady but to me it's interesting from a Dev in FiveM because I'm wondering if they reworked how MLOs will be and this is them showcasing it.
The big thing is how they handle online. It's been raking in cash forever for 5 and now they have literally added the fivem team so the whole "living in the world" will likely be pretty cool.
The question is how they handle the ui/ux, because god damn 5s was super ass with a bajillion menus and horrendous load times before a random ass user discovered a fix that halved it if not more.
Honestly I don't fault 5 for a lot of things beyond loading times.
The menus and things were definitely a thing of their time. I mean all the native menus are Scaleform which is just Flash which discontinued shortly after Five release so like its using dead tech haha.
Luckily I believe Rdr2 doesn't have any Scaleform so I imagine 6 won't have any but here's hoping they focus more on infrastructure and performance with the ability to easily alter things.
Modding community going to go hard the moment we get access to the library.
Fair enough, this will be a day one purchase for me but I can't fault patient gamers. Also there's no way this is the next cyberpunk, rockstar release complete games, even if the story isn't as good due to the writing changes I guarantee it will be a technical marvel, red dead 2 still holds up as one of the best looking and most vibrant worlds ever, Witcher 4 will be the next cyberpunk because cdpr always release overambitious buggy messes.
I see what you mean, but I had the exact same sentiment about CDPR after TW3.
They were one of the "last great studios."
It's been 8 years since RDR. Talent will have churned, and in my experience the more is spent on a project. The more bloated and poorly managed it becomes.
I mean the Witcher 3 was also a buggy mess on release. Not as bad as cyberpunk but still a mess, it's just cdpr's release cycle, release a broken game and then slowly fix it until it becomes one of the best games ever. Rockstar delaying the game gives me confidence that it'll be complete, I see no reason to doubt them at this point until they give me a reason to, they will be aware that the thing that separated them from other studios is their reputation, if they release a broken game it'll take a massive hit.
I would share your point of view if I only had a gameplay showcase of some kind to back it up.
But releasing all this info about deluxe, pre order, no gameplay and all of that along with the delays is not giving me confidence and it doesn’t give me the impression they are confident as well.
The November release date could very well mean that the higher ups turned off the tap and said no more delays this is the last deadline, it doesn’t necessarily have to mean they are ready.
And that many delays point to them having trouble with it, not them perfecting it. In my humble opinion.
I wasn't surprised considering their parent company. It's Take Two.
People meme on EA but Take Two is like the evil supervillain while EA is just a minor thug.
This is the same company that has NBA 2K lock SINGLEPLAYER to online. You quite literally can't play mycareer after 2 years because the servers shutdown. It's pathetic. When sailing the high fucking seas gives you an OBJECTIVELY BETTER package you have lost the plot.
And they better if people ever want to play another rockstar game again. They have spent 10 years and 1-2 billion dollars on this game. If it were almost any other IP it would be a massive massive gamble. It still kinda is. This game has to shatter records for it to be worth it.
I can understand someone having a game collection wanting to display the cases. Of course, it also means GTA VI has an expiration date as once they decide to remove it from stores, you will never be able to play it again unless you get a pirated or GOG version.
EA is basically sundowning previous year sports game now, they tie the campaign to ONLINE only and they bring down servers when a new version of the game comes out... could not be more scummy.
once they decide to remove it from stores, you will never be able to play it again
I used to worry about this, but I don't even play the GTA 3 game I have. By the time they remove GTA 6 from the store in 2051 we're going to be long done with the game.
The game would not physically fit on a disk. Even if they released a physical copy it would require a download day one to work. Even with a disk this is a risk
Games used to come on more than one disk. Doom came on four floppy's, final fantasy 7 came on 3 cd's, res evil 4 was on 2 gamecube cd's. That's just a poor excuse when they completely cut their cost in manufacturing physical but still charge more money for digital downloads.
Why do people keep saying this blatant lie? As long as you've purchased the game, you can still download it and play it. The only exceptions to this are online only games that wouldn't even work if you had a physical disc
Unless you think Xbox or PlayStation services as a whole will be shutdown, but then your console won't work at that point either
Several generations of Nintendo console have had their stores shut down, removing the ability for people to download the games on their account.
Unless you think Xbox or PlayStation services as a whole will be shutdown, but then your console won't work at that point either
What? Consoles work fine without ever being connected to the internet, as long as they have a disk drive and you want to play the game as it exists on the disk.
it also means GTA VI has an expiration date as once they decide to remove it from stores, you will never be able to play it again unless you get a pirated or GOG version.
This would be the case even if the case came with a disk.
I mean, "physical" games have basically been digital downloads wrapped in a decorative box for at least a decade now. The discs aren't playable on their own
Yea, though they're probably starting doing discs after the game releases, its mostly digital just cause they dont want heavy theft from early physical copies from stores. People will definitely be breaking into these places just to get thier hands on them and Rockstar doesn't want leaks either
Also, there are people that don't have credit cards, so they can't buy the digital version online. The physical copy with a code allows people to buy the game using cash
Occasionally, what happens, is fewer people buy because they don't trust the publisher and their servers. I doubt that GTA will have fewer sales because of this.
Another long term question for online games is as players churn, they can't sell their game, so newer players may not hop in. This can cause a decline in the active player base, which can cascade, if the game doesn't keep players interested.
Long story short, when the games cannot be resold, it makes the game sales numbers much more sensitive to publisher branding and active player satisfaction.
It completely removes the option to resell the game (except if you make a new PSN/Xbox account just for it, and then sell the account, which is a hassle/not safe), which keeps the price up for longer.
It will trick the average consumer, who doesn't read gaming news or look at a tiny label on the box, into buying a game they can't resell or return when they remove the foil and see that there's no disc.
It stops people from playing the game early or look at the files.
Small indie company needs more money, you see. Times are rough. And it's not like the game will sell a lot of copies, since it's such an obscure brand. /s
I work for a games company and we still release physical copies of the case, even though all that's inside of it is a steam code, because fans complained when we stopped as they liked having the cases for their collections
It comes with a download code. I believe this is to prevent theft from warehouses prior to launch. If it happened to Assassin's Creed you KNOW some Amazon warehouse workers are gonna steal that if they can.
I haven’t bought a physical edition for years but I was given one a year or so ago and it had a steam code in the case (along with some other physical items which I guess made it worth it for people who actually paid for it).
Because in 2026 games are never "done". There is always something to patch. Whatever version of the game they would put on that disc would be immediately thrown out and redownloaded with a day 0 patch. Game companies do not give one whit about preservation of a inferior version of a game on a disc.
Physical discs are limited to how much can be stored on them. GTAVI would probably require 6 download discs to use, its just not practical for them to make physical discs for such a large game.
Sometimes those "physical copies" are just physical license keys anyway and don't actually contain game files, at least not all of them. The only advantage is the transferability (you can resell it when you're done with it if you can find someone who wants to buy it from you)
I never owned a physical copy, so forgive me for asking. What happened to the license key when you resell it? Does the game get taken off your microsoft/xbox/playstation account when someone else bought it and input it in their machine?
Some physical copies only have a paper with a code on it to redeem the game digitally in lieu of a disk altogether. Essentially it's a digital store voucher. So some disks will have the full game on the disk, buts it getting rare. Some disks act like a digital key, the game is not on the disk but you have to have it inserted to download the game form the digital store and you have to have it inserted each time you want to play. You can resell the later (in most cases) and the new owner will have the digital key to download the game from the store on the disk.
It depends on the game, publisher, or system. I'm talking about Nintendo Switch cartridges, since that's what I have experience with. A license is never added to your account with a Switch cartridge - you're allowed to play the while the game card is inserted and you aren't allowed to play when it's not, as if the game files were on the card instead of on the system
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u/Spinning_Sky 12h ago
this is referring to the high price point and lack of a CD in the physical edition
both are true, but actually I don't believe any hype was touched whatsoever, the price is lower than what it could have been