Spoiler Warning: Beware of minor spoilers (and/or potential spoilers) for Grand Theft Auto VI.
It’s been a little while since we last talked about Grand Theft Auto VI – arguably the most-anticipated video game of 2026, at least for those of you lucky enough to own an Xbox Series or PS5 console. I recently watched Rockstar’s “Extended Look” at the game, and there’ve also been a couple of interesting tidbits of GTA 6 news that have trickled out, so I wanted to get into all of that today.
As always, I have a couple of important caveats before we get started! While I *am* looking forward to trying out Grand Theft Auto VI, I’m not gonna be picking it up next month. I don’t own a current-gen console, and I have no intention of spending an obscene amount of money on new hardware just for the sake of a single title. If and when Rockstar can be bothered to do what *every single other developer in the industry* does and release a PC port, I’ll be sure to check out GTA 6 at that point.
Everything we’re going to get into today is also the *subjective, not objective* opinion of just one player. I’ve been a fan of the series since I first played the original Grand Theft Auto and its London spin-off at the tail end of the ’90s, and I know what I like and want to see from these games. But I’m also keenly aware that, as someone who doesn’t play GTA Online, I’m not necessarily the true target audience here! Although gamers can be argumentative sometimes, I like to believe there’s room in the gaming community for disagreements and differences of opinion – even on the hottest games of the year – that don’t descend into name-calling and toxicity. I share my thoughts with you in that spirit.
Finally, earlier this year, I laid out three reasons why Grand Theft Auto VI could – possibly, conceivably – not be considered as big a success as its immediate predecessor. I want to clarify that, while I still believe it’s a slim possibility rather than something likely to happen, I am *not* rooting for the game to fail. I want to play a fun, engaging, and exciting open-world crime adventure as much as the next person, and while I will speak critically about GTA 6 where I feel it’s necessary, that doesn’t come from a place of “hate.” Analysis and opinions are just that – and any criticism is intended to be constructive for GTA 6, Rockstar, and the wider games industry.
With all of that out of the way… let’s talk Grand Theft Auto VI!
First of all, before we get into the “Extended Look,” a couple of other points have come up over the last few weeks. Firstly, and perhaps most significantly for the game’s potential sales prospects, we have the online mode – or rather, the complete *lack* of an online mode.
In short, while an online mode is planned for Grand Theft Auto VI, it won’t be available when the game launches, meaning GTA 6 will be a wholly single-player experience at first. I’m a single-player gamer; I’ve never really got on with online multiplayer games of any kind, so that’s just fine with me! But it does make me wonder how it’ll impact GTA 6′s potential sales. Let me explain.
Why is Grand Theft Auto V one of the biggest games on the planet? Why has it made so much money for Take-Two and Rockstar? Why is it *still* routinely in the top-twenty most-sold games some thirteen years after its launch? I’ll give you a hint: it ain’t because of its single-player mode!
Grand Theft Auto V is where it is because it’s an online game. Many folks *only* engage with the online mode, or if they did play the single-player campaign once upon a time… they haven’t for years. To release the sequel without that online component feels like a risk… but it also makes me wonder what on earth Rockstar and Take-Two have been spending all this time and money on. For the amount of time Grand Theft Auto VI has been in the works… is it not reasonable to think it’d launch with both of its main modes – single-player and online – ready to go?
I’m not at all connected with the wider GTA fan community or any folks who regularly play online, but I have to imagine that if I were a huge fan of GTA Online, I’d be pretty disappointed to learn that the sequel – which took thirteen years to be ready to go – won’t be launching with my favourite mode (or the *only* mode I care about). Some folks may well decide not to even pick up the game at launch, instead choosing to wait until the online mode is ready. While there may be some advantages to playing the campaign first – like getting acquainted with the new map, new weapons, etc. – that may not be enough to convince folks to part with their money. And it strikes me as an odd decision.
It was argued for a while that one of the main reasons why Grand Theft Auto VI couldn’t get a simultaneous PC release was because of the potential for cheating in the online mode. Rockstar, some fans alleged, wanted to ensure the console launch went smoothly and that they had more time to patch out or catch any bugs, exploits, or issues that could give PC players an advantage in multiplayer. But that argument – weak though it was – is now completely shot, so any conceivable excuse there may have been not to give the game a PC release has also evaporated.
I don’t want to linger on this for too long, ’cause I admit it sounds a bit like sour grapes coming from a PC player, but I really don’t get why Rockstar has developed such an antagonistic attitude towards PC gaming. Grand Theft Auto began as a PC series, with ports to consoles coming *after* the first game’s PC-exclusive release. And when basically every other big studio in the AAA space can manage to launch their games on PC at the same time as home consoles… I really don’t get it. It’s not a money issue, it’s not a tech issue, and it’s certainly not a multiplayer cheating issue. Maybe Rockstar hopes some fans will “double-dip;” buying the game on console first, then re-purchasing it on PC a year or two later. And… yeah, maybe some people will. But most won’t, so why not take full advantage of a big, multiplatform launch?
It didn’t make sense to me when they did it with past games, and it doesn’t now, either.
With no online mode at all, no simultaneous PC release, and a smaller install base of current-gen consoles today compared with the Xbox 360/PS3 generation in 2013… I really do wonder whether this game’s launch is gonna be as big and as financially lucrative as Rockstar and Take-Two are predicting. And that’s before we get into the raised price of the game, its $100 “special edition,” which merely adds back in cut content, and the sky-high prices of current-gen hardware.
But if you’re interested in a deeper dive into the game’s potential launch issues, click or tap here for a longer piece about that.
When Rockstar announced that Grand Theft Auto VI was going to get a collector’s edition for a whopping $400, I barely even rolled my eyes! That’s way too much money for a couple of keychains, shot glasses, and stickers, of course, but it’s also pretty common in the AAA games industry to have such things. But then I found out that this expensive collector’s edition… *doesn’t even come with a copy of the fucking game*!
So for $400, here’s what you get: a plastic alligator figure, a baseball cap with the game’s logo, a pair of plastic sunglasses, a bum-bag with the game’s logo, a mirror with a sticker on it, a keychain, a spoon, a shot glass, a bunch of stickers, a poster/map, and a metal tin.
And, as mentioned, no Grand Theft Auto VI to play.
Does that sound like $400 worth of value to you? Because to me, you know what it sounds like? One of those crappy “Loot Crate” things that people used to pay, like, $25 a month to get as a subscription. Some cheap tat vaguely related to something you’re into. I cannot fathom *anyone* looking at that collection of shite and genuinely, hand-on-heart believing that it’s worth much more than $40, let alone $400.
And I know games have been doing this for years. Every AAA game comes with an expensive edition that includes an action figure, some stickers, or whatever. But even by those standards, this feels both overpriced *and* lacklustre. Even in their own promo images, Rockstar and Take-Two couldn’t hide the fact that these things are cheaply-made shite, and some of them – like stickers and keychains – are the most basic, cheap, low-effort tat you could *possibly* throw into a collector’s edition.
To then tell players that they have to buy the actual game separately – and that their $400 is going on stickers, keychains, and plastic shite? I mean… what can I even say?
I think we’ve all known for a long time that Rockstar and Take-Two would push the boat out when it comes to monetising Grand Theft Auto VI’s launch. This is, after all, the company that sells “Shark Cards,” and is more guilty than most when it comes to normalising microtransactions in fully-priced games. But even knowing that GTA 6 was going to be monetised out of its backside… this collector’s edition still feels appalling.
Okay, okay. I promised you my thoughts on the game’s “Extended Look,” didn’t I? So let’s belatedly get into that!
Speaking as we were of Grand Theft Auto VI being excessively monetised, we have the deal Take-Two struck with Netflix; the “Extended Look” premiered exclusively on Netflix – a paid-for streaming platform – before being shown off to the rest of the world. How do we feel about that?
Though the “Extended Look” was only exclusive to Netflix for six hours, I still think it’s kind of a shitty thing to do to paywall what is, in essence, a glorified commercial. Not only that, but it generated a fair amount of ill-will towards the game, with folks rightly pointing out that locking your own marketing material away from fans, then demanding cash, isn’t a great idea. Will that translate to lower sales? No… not in any meaningful way, anyway. But it does feed into broader conversations about Take-Two and Rockstar being incredibly greedy, and has done nothing to help the game’s reputation.
On the content of the “Extended Look,” here’s what I’ll say: I thought the game looked good.
I was definitely getting more of a Red Dead Redemption II vibe than a Grand Theft Auto V vibe from the footage that was shown off, perhaps with some Cyberpunk 2077 thrown in for good measure. Those two games are a starting point for beginning to understand Grand Theft Auto VI, I feel, and with both of them being pretty darn good… well, that indicates to me that this’ll be a title I’m going to enjoy!
Red Dead Redemption II sold a whopping 85 million copies, which puts it behind Tetris, Minecraft, and – what else? – Grand Theft Auto V as the fourth-best-selling game ever. It did sell substantially fewer copies than GTA 5, but it’s an incredible game… and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. If Grand Theft Auto VI channels some of that style of storytelling and world-building… I for one will be a very happy bunny.
And I’m sure a lot of other folks will enjoy that, too. Even if Grand Theft Auto VI doesn’t outperform its predecessor, I think there’s huge potential for it to eclipse Red Dead II’s numbers – and within a matter of days of launch, it should’ve broken even and begun to turn a profit, even with the insane and highly-inflated budget that the game was afforded by Take-Two and Rockstar.
Nothing I saw in the “Extended Look” turned me off or made me feel less interested in GTA 6′s world or story, and I really didn’t notice any causes for concern in gameplay terms, either. I know some folks have criticised Grand Theft Auto VI for being locked at 30fps on console, but I felt the game looked great and seemed to be running smoothly. Speaking for myself, I’ll take a smooth 30fps over a stuttering and lagging attempt to reach 60fps any day of the week, and if a lower frame-rate is the compromise Rockstar had to make to squeeze this ambitious title onto current-gen hardware… it was a sacrifice worth making, in my view.
With the game’s story mode being so heavily emphasised – and literally being the only playable mode upon release – then the story will have to carry the game. Gameplay could be fantastic, but a narrative adventure lives or dies on the strength of its story. I have confidence in Rockstar, based on their past work – Red Dead Redemption II in particular. And with GTA 6 seeming to draw more on Red Dead II, that’s another positive note about the potential quality of its story.
I’m sure there will be opportunities in Grand Theft Auto VI to let loose in Vice City and just… go on a crime spree. That was where I had the most fun in several previous GTA titles! I had a blast tearing up those same streets in the original Vice City some two decades ago, and I’d often find that the game’s missions would be secondary to making my own fun, exploring the world, and getting into mischief! But Red Dead Redemption II, while it allowed players that same freedom, also felt like a game with a more curated story, and it was the game’s story that kept me coming back. I feel like GTA 6 is going to be more in that category, at least in single-player, with the open world serving the events of the narrative rather than being a pure sandbox. That’s my takeaway from the “Extended Look,” at any rate.
I don’t think we’ve seen enough from Jason, Lucia, or any of the other main characters – even after the “Extended Look” – to really get a feel for who they are or what their arcs will look like. We’ve been promised a “Bonnie and Clyde” type of story; a modern-day crime thriller. But we all know how Bonnie and Clyde’s stories ended – and how the gang’s stories ended in the Red Dead Redemption games, too, come to that!
Vice City – and, to an extent, other GTA games – saw players building city-spanning criminal empires. But I’m not sure something so elaborate and huge would fit with the tone of what we’ve seen so far. To me, this story feels a bit smaller in scope, more comparable to Red Dead II or Cyberpunk 2077 – the city continues to exist around the player, almost indifferent to their actions most of the time. While you can build up your characters in those worlds, I think it’s fair to say that you never quite conquer the entire city in the way that you do in some other titles.
Again, though, that’s just my preliminary read on things.
So let’s wrap this up.
Gameplay? Looks good, though hardly groundbreaking in terms of being a third-person action/shooter. Performance? We saw a carefully-curated demo, but it was running on console and it looked solid. Narrative? Harder to judge, but there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic. The open world? It looked positively gigantic, with echoes of Cyberpunk 2077′s Night City in terms of how vast it is… and how small the player might feel within it.
Now all we need is a PC port and I’ll be all set!
Seriously, though… GTA 6 looks good. Which makes it kind of disappointing that Take-Two and Rockstar are such cheapskates when it comes to launching the game on PC. I’m not gonna buy an expensive console to play one game, so I’ll have to find something else to play while I wait for the inevitable PC port… hopefully next year, not in 2028 or 2029!
I can understand not wanting to support Grand Theft Auto VI given some of Take-Two and Rockstar’s other moves. Locking trailers behind a paywall, selling cheap tat for $400, cutting out content from the game to be re-sold as part of a more expensive edition, trying to force PC players to buy two copies… the list goes on. And, of course, Rockstar is accused of union-busting and mistreating its staff here in the UK, which is pretty awful.
But in terms of the way the game looks, I’m not gonna lie: this could be one of the biggest and best titles of the decade.
So I hope this has been interesting! I won’t be reviewing Grand Theft Auto VI this year, obviously, but if there’s more to say about the game when it launches, I’ll be sure to cover any big stories right here on the website. And when that belated PC port finally arrives, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on GTA 6 for myself. When that happens, I’ll be sure to talk about the game some more, so I hope you’ll join me for that. Thanks for checking out my thoughts on the “Extended Look” today. See you in Leonida!
Grand Theft Auto VI is scheduled to be released in November 2026 for Xbox Series S/X and PlayStation 5. A PC release has not been confirmed. The Grand Theft Auto series – including GTA 6 and other titles discussed above – is the copyright of Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
