Enraged GTA 6 fans tear strips off Xbox over rumoured performance restrictions — ‘F*** Microsoft’

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The incoming Grand Theft Auto VI will launch exclusively on current-generation consoles — leaving millions of PlayStation owners unable to enjoy the feverishly-anticipated new game. That means you’ll need a Sony PS5, PS5 Digital Edition, Xbox Series X, or Xbox Series S. Sadly, it doesn’t seem that a Fire TV Stick 4K will cut it.

However, experts have raised concerns that a simultaneous release across Xbox Series S and the other crop of consoles could severely impact the performance of Grand Theft Auto 6. In a bid to reduce costs, enabling it to offer the Series S at a much more affordable price point than other current-generation consoles, Microsoft reduced the amount of grunt inside this cut-price hardware.

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Xbox Series S comes equipped with a weaker GPU, with just 4TF (teraflops) compared to the 12TF found inside its more powerful sibling and 10.28TF found inside both Sony PS5 consoles. A teraflop is a measurement of a GPU’s ability to calculate one trillion floating-point operations per second. The Series S is capable of 4TF — or four trillion floating-point calculations each second, on average.

And that’s not the only difference.

Microsoft ships less RAM in the Series S too, with just 8GB under the bonnet. For comparison, the PlayStation 5 has 12.5GB and the Xbox Series X boasts 13GB. This memory allows the console to temporarily store data that’s easily accessible — with these files accessible much faster than digging into the hard-drive.

Digital Foundry predicts 720p on Series S
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With less RAM, the Series S can store fewer files and is forced to dip into the data found in the hard-drive more often, slowing down performance across the board.

It’s these limitations that have led the team at Digital Foundry to conclude that GTA VI will most likely be limited to 720p resolution on the Xbox Series S.

“We can assume 720p target for the Series S,” speculated John Linneman from the Digital Foundry team on a recent stream. For those who don’t know, Digital Foundry provides in-depth analysis of video games and hardware, offering insights into frame-rate, lighting techniques, and performance. “If they’re going this hard on these Ray-Tracing effects, they can’t just rip them out either. You can’t just say ‘oh, I’m going to turn this off’ — you need a fallback, you’ll need to art it in the right way for the fallback to look good. So this is one of those cases where they’re going to have to make it work. So, we’ll see what that means.”

For those who don’t know, Ray Tracing is a lighting technique that’s become increasingly popular with game developers. Rather than shadows and light sources being hard-coded into the visuals of the game, Ray-Tracing simulates every virtual ray of light and bounces it around the scene to create naturalistic lighting effects.

As your character moves around the world, the shadows, reflections, and light will be simulated in real-time. It’s an intense process that requires a lot more processing power, but results in much prettier visuals.

Looking at the Grand Theft Auto VI announcement trailer, the team at Digital Foundry believe developers Rockstar Games have designed the fictional US State of Leonida with Ray-Tracing in mind, with stunning sunsets shown reflecting on the water and windscreens, twinkling city lights glinting at night as a plane flies overhead, and several other stunning shots with realistic lighting throughout the 1:31 promotional clip.

It’s unclear whether Rockstar Games’ commitment to debuting GTA VI on the Series S simultaneously with the more powerful Series X and Sony PS5 will have any impact on the other console versions. Digital Foundry’s John Linneman refers to a “fallback” lighting technique that developers could’ve spent time building into the game to enable less powerful hardware — like the Xbox Series S — to still run the epic crime-thriller.

And some Grand Theft Auto fans are not happy about it.

“F*** Microsoft for releasing that console,” one commentator on social news website Reddit posted following the comments about a 720p ceiling for the Xbox Series S were revealed.

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Another mused: “Sure the game will run, but the real question will be if it can maintain a steady 30fps or is it going get choppy when there is a lot of effects happening at once or how much will have to be cut to maintain a stable framerate? I’m sure R* will figure it out, but I’m betting the experience of the game is going to pretty noticeable.”

“I kinda hate the idea that supporting this dumb console means precious time lost on actually optimizing for next gen potential, just for making it ‘run’ at all on this potato. Such a waste of time and resources,” one GTA 6 fan posted in the heat discussion around Xbox Series S support.

Some have speculated that while the Series S will output 720p, this will then be upscaled to 1080p so that every pixel on a HD television is used. This was the same technique employed by the team at Rockstar Games for its last title, the expansive western Red Dead Redemption 2. One Reddit commentator summed-up the technique by writing: “Also RDR2 on xbox one was native 864p upscaled to 1080p and it still looked amazing.”

GTA 6 is now the longest Rockstar title to not receive any update from Rockstar since the first trailer.

Could this be a sign for a future delay? pic.twitter.com/6ccoIFthiz

— GTA 6 Countdown ⏳ (@GTAVI_Countdown) August 18, 2024

The discussion on the impact of Series S support comes just a few days after Grand Theft Auto VI became the Rockstar Games title with the longest gap between the release of its first trailer and any other update from the studio.

With August 18 in the rearview mirror, it’s now been 257 days since the GTA 6 trailer was published on YouTube to record views …with no sign of new screenshots, maps, or another trailer with new details on the feverishly-anticipated game. That figure was calculated by Rockstar Games watcher @GTAVI_Countdown on X, formerly known as Twitter. It compared the gaps between the first trailer and new details from the teams at Rockstar Games for the Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2.

The latter saw Rockstar Games’ fans wait 214 days between the initial trailer and an official update from the developers in the form of new screenshots, meanwhile, Grand Theft Auto V had a gap of 253 days for the same content.

The last Grand Theft Auto was the previous record-holder… but now Grand Theft Auto VI has broken the record. And an additional three days have now passed since @GTAVI_Countdown did its initial calculation.

That means PS5 and Xbox fans have been waiting 270 days for any news from Rockstar Games.

The silence from Rockstar Games has fuelled speculation that GTA VI could be delayed — a fear that flared-up in the wake of Hollywood strikes. Parent company Take-Two has confirmed a vague release date for late next year, but sources within Rockstar Games told gaming publication Kotaku that the transition from remote-working back to the office could be behind setbacks.

Pushing the release of Grand Theft Auto VI into 2026 is being considered as a fallback plan.

Its reporting, published back in March, reads: “As remote workers struggle with an unwanted return-to-office mandate from Rockstar Games, Kotaku has learned from sources with knowledge of the game’s development process that GTA 6 could miss its 2025 release window and slip into 2026. The majority of sources were certain that early 2025 is no longer possible.

“Instead, the target is firmly ‘Fall 2025’ and while most seem confident of hitting that date, I’m still told there is a possibility of a delay, as previously reported.”

It comes as Rockstar Games and Facebook parent company Meta confirmed plans to freeze development of the first-ever Virtual Reality (VR) entry into the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

Meta, which is worth £1.3 trillion, revealed that it was working with Rockstar Games, the team behind Grand Theft Auto, on a project “many years in the making” back in 2021. The VR title would be an immersive reimagining of GTA: San Andreas, first launched in 2004 on PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

It was originally developed for the Meta Quest 2, but development on this all-new GTA title has dragged on for so long that Meta has since launched an upgraded version of its VR headset, the Meta Quest 3 to compete head-to-head with the Apple Vision Pro.

“GTA: San Andreas is on hold indefinitely while we both focus on other projects,” a spokesperson for Meta Quest VR confirmed in a comment under an unrelated YouTube video. “We look forward to working with our friends at Rockstar in the future.”

Despite work seemingly taking place on the upgraded new iteration of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas — the seventh mainline entry into the blockbuster game series — for at least three years, Meta and Rockstar Games never released an official trailer, in-game footage, or poster for the title.

However, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who very likely tested an early beta version of the game during development, once shared that “this new version” of Grand Theft Auto will “offer players an entirely new way to experience this iconic open world in virtual reality.” It’s unclear whether we’ll ever get the chance to revisit the fictional city of San Andreas in an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) gameplay.

It’s interesting that Meta and Rockstar Games have gone out of their way not to label the project as “cancelled,” although the fact that it’s on hold “indefinitely” doesn’t inspire much confidence that it’ll launch for VR headset wearers anytime soon.

With nothing else to focus on, Grand Theft Auto fans will be hopeful that Rockstar Games will be able to make its deadline …despite the radio-silence on any new details about the game. Currently pencilled in for late 2025, GTA 6 is expected to be one of the biggest launches of all-time.

Its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto V, has gone on to become the biggest-selling entertainment product in history, with $6 billion in revenue to its name since its launch over a decade ago. The long wait between instalments in the Grand Theft Auto franchise is an outlier in the industry, with other chart-topping series, like Call of Duty, EA Sports FC, and Pokémon, typically launching new games every year.

Experts believe the next instalment in the Grand Theft Auto franchise could break its own record sales numbers. Its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto V, still holds the crown for the best opening week of sales in video game history — raking in $1.15bn (£1.2bn) in five days. It has gone on to become the second biggest game of all-time, although it’s still 100 million copies behind the Gold Medalist, Minecraft.

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Although it’s worth noting that Grand Theft Auto V has now appeared on three console generations, starting with the Xbox 360 and Sony PS3 back in September 2013. An upgraded version of the game launched on the latest crop of video game consoles, Xbox Series X|S and Sony PS5, in March 2022 with support for 4K Ultra HD visuals, ray-tracing, 60 frames-per-second, and 3D audio.

The continued popularity of the game is partly attributed to GTA Online.

But many like Dmitri Williams, a video game business expert and professor at University of Southern California, expect the long-awaited follow-up to perform even better.

He said: “The brand is as strong or stronger than it was before, but additionally the game industry is larger. If it maintains the same slice of the pie, it’s going to be big, because it will come from a bigger pie.

“The games industry is simply massive globally, and is no single genre or platform. It’s so large and so varied that even fractions of it are larger than whole parallel industries like movies.”

Sony is tipped to capitalise on the excitement around the next Rockstar Games title by launching an improved PlayStation 5 console with upgraded graphics and a tweaked case design.

The next instalment of the popular Grand Theft Auto series will take gamers back to Vice City, which last appeared in 2006’s Vice City Stories. Rockstar Games has already confirmed the franchise will use a female protagonist for the first time since 2000, known as Lucia.

Little is known about the plot of the satirical action-adventure game, but it’s widely expected to mirror the misadventures of Bonnie and Clyde across a fictional US State that spoofs on Florida, dubbed Leonida.