Former Rockstar animator reckons it's "gonna be a long time" before GTA 6 comes to PC
Rockstar likely focussed on "pushing the limits" on console hardware.
Grand Theft Auto 6's first trailer has resulted in an M-class star's worth of reaction videos from YouTubers across the globe, but one that stands out from the army of gurning thumbnails is the response of Mike York. York is a professional animator who worked at Rockstar for 6 years, designing animations for both Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2. Now he runs his own YouTube channel, York Reacts, and naturally he had some things to say about GTA6's trailer.
The video primarily focusses on how the trailer was constructed, and what it represents as a step forward for Rockstar's visual tech. For example, referring to the opening shot of protagonist Lucia being interviewed in prison, York says. "This is an in-game cutscene. A lot of the games that you see are done with cinematics, and they cut to a scene, and it's not all in-game." He then goes on to state that "Everything you see in a GTA game is all done in-game." In a follow-up video, he clarifies that when he says in game, he specifically means in-engine. Nonetheless, the point is nothing that we saw was pre-rendered, which tracks with how Rockstar has marketed its previous two games.
His most relevant point, however, comes when York talks about how greatly improved GTA 6's NPCs look. "Look how realistic they look now. Usually the old NPCs and somebody who's just kinda milling about in the game, that's not a main character, doesn't look this good. And that's because they're pushing the limits right now on this new hardware for PS5. And eventually this game will probably come out for PC, but it's gonna be a long time, right?"
Rockstar has yet to comment on whether GTA 6 will come to PC, with only the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S mentioned in the press release announcing the game. This isn't hugely surprising. Both Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 came to PC much later than consoles, the former with an eighteen-month delay, the latter just over a year.
York was present for the launch of both those games, so he'll know something about how the company's approaches releasing on different platforms works. Reading into what he says, it seems Rockstar likes to squeeze everything it can out of a standardised piece of hardware, before launching on a platform that has a much broader technical spectrum. Developers can obviously push visuals much further on PC than on consoles, but that risks excluding a large portion of players if the game fails to optimise for older machines, making it a tricky balancing act. Recent innovations at either end of that spectrum, like ray-tracing and the Steam Deck, further complicate matters on the development end.
In August, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick suggested that Rockstar didn't have a hard strategy for porting games to PC, saying it "it depends on the vision that the creative teams have for the title" adding that "we might bring it in its original form" or "in certain instances we might remaster or remake". Again, this sounds like Rockstar examines what PCs can do once they've got the console version out, and builds the port around that.
York discusses far more than Rockstar's approach to launching on different platforms, making observations about the wide array of body types visible in the game, the density of animations, and providing little nuggets from his own career, like how he animated the crocodiles in Red Dead 2. Both videos are worth a look, and it's interesting watching someone with the knowledge to back up the passion speculate on where a team he used to work for might go next.