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GTA V launch date for PC confirmed as 27th January 2015

by Mark Tyson on 15 September 2014, 09:00

Tags: Rockstar Games (NASDAQ:TTWO), PC

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Rockstar has finally shed some light with regards to GTA V's release dates on next gen consoles and PC. It also confirmed a range of new features and improvements that will grace these newer versions of the game.

Grand Theft Auto V first launched in September 2013, but only on PS3 and Xbox 360. The publisher announced over the weekend that the game will be arriving on the PC on 27 January, a few months after PS4 and Xbox One's 18 November release date. Although PC gamers will have a few extra weeks to wait, at least the date has now been officially confirmed.

A wide range of new features, such as improved resolution and major visual and technical upgrades will be available for the upcoming versions. Players can expect upgrades including:

  • New weapons, vehicles and activities
  • Additional wildlife
  • Denser traffic
  • New foliage system
  • Enhanced damage and weather effects, and much more

Additionally, there will be new radio selections with more than 100 extra new songs. Furthermore, those who pre-order the game will receive $1,000,000 in-game bonus cash to spend across Grand Theft Auto 5 and Grand Theft Auto Online.

Grand Theft Auto Online is getting an increased player count, now up to 39 players on PS4 and Xbox One. However, Rockstar failed to mention the PC's total. Another thing we learned is that existing players will be able to transfer their GTA Online characters and progression to the new versions of the game.

Lastly, a new GTA 5 trailer has been revealed, showing off a preview captured from the upcoming version destined for the PS4. Although the familiar story line and scenes are shown, the visuals look much improved, reflecting the increased draw distance and higher resolution. Please check out the video below, and don't forget to share your excitement (or disappointment) with us.



HEXUS Forums :: 19 Comments

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January 27th. Cool. So how long after that will it be playable?;)

Edit: Any official PC requirements yet?
adidan
Any official PC requirements yet?

Does it matter? For most games the hardware requirements are set so low that it looks like an early Ray Harryhausen movie.
Brian224
Does it matter? For most games the hardware requirements are set so low that it looks like an early Ray Harryhausen movie.
I was thinking of realistic requirements, you know what I meant cheeky sod. :)
adidan
Brian224
Does it matter? For most games the hardware requirements are set so low that it looks like an early Ray Harryhausen movie.
I was thinking of realistic requirements, you know what I meant cheeky sod. :)
Maybe I'm missing something, but surely if you can match the power of the PS4/XBone then you should at least be able to play at that quality level on your PC? I would have thought Rockstar would have pitched the “realistic” level at something that isn't going to mean having to spend thousands of pounds/punt/euros/dollars/etc on your PC rig, since therein lies commercial disaster.
Additionally, there will be new radio selections with more than 100 extra new songs.
Any chance of reinstating that feature from one of the very early GTA's where you had a “user defined” radio station that you could track-populate by putting MP3's in a certain folder.
crossy
Maybe I'm missing something, but surely if you can match the power of the PS4/XBone then you should at least be able to play at that quality level on your PC?
Well it's really not quite as simple as that. The mistake people keep making with comparing the consoles to PC, is just because they're x86, assume it's identical to a PC and straightforward to compare. They're not. Besides the custom logic around the x86/GCN processing elements, custom uncore, etc, developers also have a static hardware target allowing for more work on optimising for the uArch.

Yeah, I also know ‘optimising’ is a word thrown about too much, but just for way of example, the developers can run traces and performance profilers on their code to predict exactly how it will run on a fixed target, and modify it where there are avoidable stalls etc. Then there are different APIs. Also, they're free to use and fully depend on any instruction sets available to them without having to worry about backwards compatibility. On PC, if devs want to make use of e.g. AVX for something like physics, AI or whatever, they *must* then create at least two compiled binaries in order for systems without AVX compatibility to play it. A good amount of PC games simply don't bother, and stick with something like SSE2 for simplicity. Multiple binaries = more work after all.

However, on the thread topic, as crossy said it would presumably run fine on reasonably powerful hardware. There's little point releasing a game next to no-one can actually play. However it must be said, GTA4 doesn't inspire much confidence when it comes to Rockstar's PC ports…