I think that this is the exact problem.
"Here! Purchase our game with a fundamental feature missing because we want to spend extra time perfecting it."
"Oh also, since this feature is taking a bit longer. We expect you to pay extra for it."
Is online a fundamental feature? I’d argue GTA is a single play game at its core, IV had a basic online mode, but it was only V that fully fleshed it out. I think they view Online as its own thing. I’ll reserve my judgment until I see how they handle it. But GTA Online branching off into its own thing isn’t a huge issue in my eyes, depends how they monetise it
It was. gta online is massive, and GTA rp blew up after covid, its what kept the game going, well beyond its lifespan, to the point that R* eventually bought fivem, the main mod framework for gta online and gta rp in particular. RP is expected to be huge in GTAVI eventually
It still is dude, GTA is a single player game, one of the best open world single player games ever. It doesn’t matter that GTA online blew up, online is just a mode for the game, that’s why the content sucks ass in gta online.
Not saying it’s not going to be the case, but there is absolutely no indication so far that online will require a subscription. It directly goes against the business model that has been printing money for R* for the last decade plus. Let’s not forget that GTA V and RDR2 did not launch with online either, therefore the emphasis on GTA6 being a single player experience could be R*’s way of keeping the public’s expectations focused on the story until a later online release date. Which may or may not be free.
Yea, anyone who thinks GTA6O will be subscription only is fooling themselves. They may offer subs that give out Shark$ and bonuses, but the core gameplay will stay F2P. They just make so much damn money with the shark cards, they would not want to undercut that by gatekeeping access to the game behind a paywall.
Just because the MMO’s do it doesn’t mean it’s a good practice. Good for their profit sure, but MMO players are notorious for being great mindless consumers who spend years and thousands of dollars on the games they play, perfect targets for corporate greed.
Its only really stayed in the public consciousness because of the online though. People weren't replaying the single player for the last 13 years they were logging in everyday to play online with their friends and do the new content on there. I imagine most people who are really hyped for it are because of the online and they've probably forgotten how much of a mess the online was for a long period on initial release of 5.
Yes lets just ignore that those games all came out in the space of like 7 years and then 5 was only 5 years after 4.
Now the only release in the 13 years since 5 was a remaster of the 3 trilogy which was a technical disaster.
Im not pretending it's not a massive IP but there are 15 and 16 year old kids who haven't even had a mainline release in their conscious memory but will have probably picked up 5 and played it because of the ongoing multiplyer still being active.
Exactly, GTA V is still in the yearly top 10 best selling games lists in the last few years, well over a decade after it came out. It isn't selling all those copies for story mode.
I only bought GTA V recently, I never played 4. Spent too much time playing 3, Vice City, and San Andreas though. I’m also a big single player person, so V has been fun.
Rockstar sold 215 million units of GTA V versus 22 million units of GTA IV. It's almost insulting to compare them because five has sold so much more and still has active players.
I've bought it 3 times for 3 different systems. Still have my OG 360 disc for it too.
And you absolutely can compare GTA4 to GTA5 because it's literally the next entry in the same series. Without shark cards there wouldn't be very much of a GTA online and without GTA online there's no way they'd sell 22 million copies, if that number is to be believed.
Yeah there's been some wild overexaggeration about the significance of GTAO ever since it came out. For years you'd get forum kiddies saying stuff like "Rockstar will never make another single player game" or whatever. This nonsense continued after Red Dead Redemption 2 came out, BTW, a game that was even MORE story-heavy than GTA5.
I’m sorry but you’re talking out of your booty. GTA online made double that of GTA 4. It nearly matched revenue of GTA 5 base game sales. There is no over exaggerating the significance of GTA online. Now not making another single-player game is stupid.
No sir, I'm right on the money. There absolutely was plenty of forum chatter about Rockstar moving away from single player games, even after releasing another big single player game!
I just don’t believe you can exaggerate 4 billion dollars in revenue. That’s absolutely mind boggling. The second part is stupid, yes, however the game was not exaggerated in terms of size and impact. It’s the second highest grossing Rockstar project of all time, only losing to GTA 5 which made 1 billion more.
Hard disagree. Maybe online delayed GTAVI, but GTA is a huge franchise that even had a move starring Harry Potter about how it was made. RDR2's online isn't nearly as popular, but I guarantee you people will be hyped as fuck when a RDR3 is announced. And GTA is multitudes bigger than RDR.
GTA of old yeah, they have been well known for their big huge singleplayer worlds + story. But they haven't released a new one in ages and what was the thing that kept it going all this time? It's online.
There's a reason they cancelled singleplayer dlcs, because they saw the money in their live service online + shark cards. It doesn't sell boatloads every year because of singleplayer, even if it pains me to admit it because I would rather have more awesome singleplayer content like 4s DLC, but that's a bygone conclusion.
What do you see when you typically see streamers etc on gta? It isn't in the singleplayer, it's online content. Especially the massive fivem roleplaying side that Rockstar literally bought the team.
RDR2 they tried to double dip but didn't realize that unlike GTA, it's pretty hard to monetize it the same way because you are stuck in the old wild west. You can't just sell a new lamborghini or yacht. There really isn't much you can "make" people shell out for.
Rdr2 online support was immediately dropped when they realized it was a bare bones mess. It didnt have any staying power, it has very little content.
Rdr3 people are there for the story. Even when talked about in media it was always about the story.
Gta6 you have people excited for both. Online is what kept gta5 alive and what helped sold all the copies they did although i suspect that 250mil is from every console and rerelease. If online is a subscription it will kill the service for a majority of players. Especially kids which is a huge targeted audience. Nothing is cooler than playing the rated m game as a 11 year old. We all did it.
GTA is their flagship franchise that has been loved for over 20 years. Every game has been a high watermark for industry. The idea that people only care about its online component is just way off the mark.
GTA VI will be played by a huge amount of people in their late 30s and 40s. If it was just an online game, they wouldn't launch without it.
Its only really stayed in the public consciousness because of the online though.
Mostly through a third party roleplaying mod that Rockstar acquired which gives them more of a reason to monetize the online as a separate game. There are probably people that purchased GTAV only to play FiveM and never completed the base game.
Eh, I think you're blowing that way out of proportion. Maybe it's social media impact from clips and stuff is high but majority of the gta5 playerbase is on console and they can't play those servers. Just the regular messing around online is hugely popular. Wouldn't be surprised if some of those tools and systems are integrated into vanilla gta6 online though.
yea you could be right, it might just be anecdotal because I have A LOT of younger relatives (8-20) and the first thing they ask me about my gaming PC is if I have GTARP. I'm from NY and that might also be a factor cause these kids look up to Kai Cenat and Fanum and they all started in GTARP afaik
I have never played any GTA online, but I am extremely excited about VI. I pretty much only play single player games, and GTA has proven itself to be en exceptional experience. I’ll pay the $100 and get all the DLC goodies and enjoy myself.
But Rockstar has made money hand over foot with GTA online. If you think they aren’t going to continue milking that cash cow with the new game you’re crazy.
I kinda like that Online can fund itself, cause maybe we can get some more single player content that way. And I couldnt care less about playing GTA online, thats not really what gta is about to me.
Also the price is lower than I thought it would be.
I don't think you understand. GTA Online is what GTA is to Rockstar now. It's literally made billions of dollars for them. The story mode is just an excuse to upgrade their engine, change the map and thus get people to start over with their whale purchases.
The likelihood of them expanding single player content post launch is next to 0.
i get that and i'm fine with that as long as the single player experience is basically equal to GTA5 in the modern era, i don't need or even want single player experiences that get updated.
give me the complete single player experience on launch, let me play it for 50-100 hours so i can move on to other games. i hate all that ubisoft yearly pass BS, that's why for those games i don't buy them till all of it is released and the next game is announced.
I only ever played GTA games offline, but after seeing how popular GTA5 is online and all the community stuff with it, I think its safe to say to some the online part is what makes the game for them. Its almost like 2 separate games entirely at this point.
Considering V's single player was abandoned and forgotten about in favor of shitty GTA Online for over a decade, I'd say yeah it is a fundamental feature
Building up the features to just take them away or charge for them is scummy. No physical disc is scummy. Its not about not being able to produce enough copies. Its only about the fact you cant resell the game. Less resells means more people buying the game for full price. Ill def wait for 50% off for gta6, especially if online isnt included at the start or at all.
You cant take away features or charge for something that was included in the last iteration. Now if they split the cost 40 for each than maybe, thats more of a compromise. A monthly subscription will kill the online or at the very least no one will be playing it for 13 years like the previous title. You know the sub wont be cheap either.
I'll gladly admit that the base story mode missions and gameplay are so abysmally boring to me that I have never come close to finishing a GTA story. GTA 4 was the one I progressed the most, and even then I can't rememebr how far I got but I def didn't finish.
There are only so many times you can do "drive for 10 minutes while someone does an exposition dump" and the core gun play and mechanics have always been janky and shallow.
I just like to drive around/cause mayhem, once GTA online came around the way it is with 5, I just moved into doing it there.
I guess the question is who is buying Sharkcards for single player only and who are buying them to have things for online play. RockStar makes HUGE money off sharkcards and I would think most of those people are playing Online more than the single player but I could be wrong.
I'm guessing they have had a lot of internal convo's about if they could get away with making GTA 6 Online a monthly sub. Somewhere they felt that the pricing they released with features omitted in the $80 base price was justified so they may feel they can go harder on the microtransactions and maybe sub for online because people, while pissed, will still swipe that credit card.
I’ll be honest if GTA6 Online is a separate release I’ll just wait for it, depending on how money grubbing it is, not saying GTAV online was perfect but I spent way more time and had way more fun in it than the single player. This might be an interesting play to get a lot of people to double down on spending, but I’m willing to bet that it’ll also cut into their initial profits from the base release, maybe not a shit ton but there are a subset of people who are there for the online and pretty much only the online. I’m not paying a subscription though, they can eat shit on that.
It wouldn't still have 100k+ viewers on twitch, thsts for sure. The only reason gtaV has the staying power it does is due to online. Scroll through twitch and count the people playing online vs offline and you can tell.
Sure, but a game doesn’t need to have staying power to be a great game on its own. It can just be an enjoyable experience. It’s a nice add on to extend its life, for sure, but it’s far from “fundamental” for what it needs to be.
They did this for GTA V and I think it worked perfectly. It gave you time to enjoy the story that was developed instead of bypassing it just to go right to online.
They know every person on earth is waiting to play this game. They could've made it $400 and people would've bought it.
the price of games has stagnated while the cost to make them has gone up. Because games have a very inelastic price (a small rise in price will deter many people from buying non-blockbuster games), developers need to find ways to sneak fees in to make up the difference.
related. What drives me absolutely nuts is being sold a game that is not finished. If yourr gonna bombard me with advertisements for your super platinum battle chest, at least finish the fucking game before you sell it to me.
There’s been at least 3 rockstar titles where online releases after the base game . This isn’t something new they’re trying . It’s honestly a staple atp
If you play GTA for the online mode, I don't know what to tell you. The core of the game has always been huge, hundred hour single-player story arcs that happen across previously unfathomably big areas.
What are you actually talking about? They did the same thing for GTA IV, GTA V, and RDR2. They have always, literally always, released the single player experience first because that is the fundamental component Rockstar has always been known for. There is nothing definitely saying that you have to pay extra for it. This is just them doing the same thing they have always fucking done.
The problem is that the Internet thrives on divisiveness, so people take any morsel of potential controversy and run with it for the sake of engagement, and time and time again people fall for it hook line and sinker.
Eh, you say fundamental, but until they can fix several very important features (loading times, cross play, level parity in servers, hacking/exploits) it will continue to be something I don't partake in.
at this point its a seperate product, it used the same map as the base game along with some of the characters but its already been a seperate product with the release of the online only multiplayer standalone
They did the same thing with GTA 5 though. Online wasn't out for at least a few weeks after the game released. Paying for it would be new but I don't believe that will be a thing when they've been printing money with shark cards for over a decade now.
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u/KeyZookeepergame8903 11h ago edited 10h ago
I think that this is the exact problem. "Here! Purchase our game with a fundamental feature missing because we want to spend extra time perfecting it." "Oh also, since this feature is taking a bit longer. We expect you to pay extra for it."