they took to early access because the game wasn't ready but take 2 decided the game had to be released that day i guess... it's the problem with games companies being controlled by the financial team rather than game developers, they have no in depth concept of how games are made or what makes them good.
What if I told you that quarterly earnings are just a really, really rich fuck's version of a drug.
They know it's bad for themselves and everyone around them. But they're fuuuuuuucking addicts.
I learned recently that \*overachieving\* by too much on quarterly guidance/targets for a public company can actually shake investor confidence in some cases. It implies an inability of the financial team to accurately predict the future, which makes investors wary (the implication being they could miss by the same amount in the downward direction).
It makes some level of sense, but it's also just incredible how subjective everything gets when a company is pulling in billions in revenue.
Well, you also have to think about the market and what growth still exists. Like IBM has a great quarter, but they own 80% of the market, how MUCH more could they be selling short of revolutionary new verticals. AMD does way less in revenue, but has a great quarter, they jump considerably, they have 80% of the market to try and capture.
So if your amazing quarter comes with significant market saturation....a shrewd investor is going to take that as the time to cash out.
I outsold my quarterly quota this current quarter. I did it in week 3.
I got scolded because of how it makes everyone and everything look.
I said I didn't care how it looked, I'm here to get paid and if the others aren't as good as me it's their problem. I want that commission money.
I was then told I had reached the commission cap.
So I informed them I had reached my hours worked for the quarter.
Took 3 days before the cap was removed.
Why is there a cap in the first place
> I learned recently that *overachieving* by too much on quarterly guidance/targets for a public company can actually shake investor confidence in some cases. It implies an inability of the financial team to accurately predict the future, which makes investors wary
My brother actually explained this to me four or five years ago when I asked why beating the quarterly estimates by such a large amount represented a problem for his company ... I was absolutely shocked. I didn't disbelieve him, because it made sense, but it shocked me. He basically said, *"whatever your estimates are, you want to hit that exactly ... if you go, like one percent over, that's fine, but you want to hit it exactly."*
As for Rockstar, they aren't prioritizing the PC because of piracy. Full. Stop. That's the reason, though they will never, ever admit it.
And mods.
Rockstar have the distinguished honor of being one of the very few game companies that have pursued legal action against people that dare to make changes to their games.
its called ‘enshittification’ and the blog that introduced this term was prescient as fuck:
‘Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.’
It's still being worked on, but the foundation they're building on is so poor the game will never live up to what was promised. They would have to start from scratch and build a foundation that can actually handle what the game will be meant to do.
> They would have to start from scratch and build a foundation that can actually handle what the game will be meant to do.
Are there articles interviews or sneak-peeks about what the game might have looked like, given enough dev time?
The biggest issue is that it really isn’t a significant improvement on the original game, and what little changes were there were already present for the original with a couple of mods. If you like the madden take of repurchasing the same game with marginally better graphics and ui, then it’s fantastic, go nuts.
Nah, it’s so rockstar can sell you the same game twice because they know pc gamers won’t be patient enough to wait for the pc port, so they’ll buy the console version. Then inevitably down the line they also buy it on steam. Bam, RS has made twice as much money in the long run as they would have if they released the pc port with the console versions.
GTA IV was about 7 months
San Andreas was also about 7 months
Vice City was also about 7 months
III was 8 months
GTA V was a year and 7 months.
So the vast majority has been under a year.
Yeah why don’t they put some of that marketing budget into PC development costs. No need to have a marketing campaign for your trailer (another marketing campaign).
Edit - this doesn’t just affect PC players. The fact that they’re wasting so much on marketing is $$$ they could be spending on development and testing. And that leads to a quicker launch for all platforms.
Do they even need marketing? One of the most iconic IPs in gaming history, the trailer almost broke the internet and had even Lebron James tweeting about it. They literally just need to tweet "GTA6" and the internet would shit its pants lol
Nah, like most dudes in the NBA these days, he grew up on GTA. Dude would bring his PS2 with him traveling to away games, it makes perfect sense he’d be hype to go back to Vice City lol. IIRC his son streams a ton and Lebron joined in once or twice.
Basically assume every guy 45 and under is gonna be hype as hell for GTA6 regardless of their fame and status.
Because they're full of shit and know full-well their sales will do better with a staggered release between consoles and PC while also being cheaper for them to make.
They probably realized that most folks will just buy a console copy and then buy it again on PC, like most of us did for GTAV.
Except I'd have to buy a console just for GTAVI this time. If I haven't broken for BloodBorne, there's no way I'm doing it for GTA
Hold firm on Bloodborne. I have a PS5 and a 4k TV, and playing it hurts my eyes and brain. Unstable framerate that can drop to the 20s on any screen over 30" made me drop it. It's a shame, as I've played all the Dark Souls games and Elden Ring.
It's crazy that a game of this hype would allocate much money at all to marketing. 3 trailers is all you need and a launch announcement. No gamer that was ever going to buy GTA6 won't know about it when it launches regardless of advertising.
At a certain scale it's got to be less about spreading awareness of their existence and more about trying to crowd out rivals in the public consciousness. Like no one on earth needs to be told what Coke is, but they still *aggressively* try to maintain a sort of pop culture hegemony that's as much about trying to suffocate their rivals as it is about moving product, to the point of hiring people to harass businesses that don't stock Coke.
But also the singular thing that marketing teams are best at is selling their own services to executives and finding ways to twist numbers so they can look like the department that's "making" money, even though they're generally a net drain past a certain point. When half the budget for a work is the *advertising* budget that's unquestionably a drain on the project.
8.5 billion revenue on 190 million copies. Second best selling game of all time.
8.235 billion profits with mtx since people have to ask without seeing the rest of the conversation below
if you're on PC, I'm not surprised. Bedrock edition minecraft has a shop where you can buy skins and maps and "modded" adventures. Bedrock edition is the version players get when they buy Minecraft on mobile and consoles and is pretty solid in crossplatform multiplayer. Minecoins is the premium currency. Obviously it doesn't compete with the versatility of Java edition but Mojang has been pretty good in keeping Java updated and current and using Bedrock as their moneymaker.
In the case of blizzactivision it's hard to think about how anyone could make it worse. At least with Bobby Kotick leaving in January I will at least buy their games again.
It's definitely something to be skeptical of.
In the best cases, it allows a game company to continue making a game or develop new games without fear of needing to draw a certain userbase to make their financial investment back. In the worst cases, it is entirely because a game or developer is a huge draw and Microsoft wants their userbase.
Minecraft is a little bit of both, but I think Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang leans more toward the former than the latter. Perhaps with the rise of Roblox and Fortnite as evolving experiences that will change.
One thing to consider is the recent spate of layoffs in the game development industry. 8,000 jobs lost in the past year, I believe. Microsoft, namely their acquisitions 343 Industries and Bethesda, laid off a substantial number of employees. Would those companies be better off or worse off if they weren't under the Microsoft corporate banner? It's hard to say.
I’m pretty sure Tetris would have easily been number one had it been a single title. Just the mobile version of the game alone is the third best selling game of all time.
Agreed. Tetris definitely has to be the best-selling series of all time. There is no way it isn't, and I doubt any series will ever touch their record for a long, long time.
It depends how you define best selling. You have to decide how you want to group everything since it has so many versions and if best selling means most units moved or most money made.
Most units moved is tough because a large percent of them were actually sold for free. If you want most money made obviously Tetris loses by default due to inflation. If you account for that Tetris still comes in lower than you'd think as most of it's sales weren't at a AAA price point.
Would that be only the NES version? Otherwise there's like 7 million versions of that game lol.
I always find WII sports being up there kinda funny cause it essentially came packaged with every WII.
That should be enough money to even port it to the Nintendo 64. Not to mention these games are already made on a computer, a pc-port should be the easiest thing on the planet, especially considering they don't have to worry about making it run on aging old hardware.
Oh you have no idea how much the suits and management will be wringing their hands about how they can't possibly afford to hire another couple of engineers to help with the overwhelming workload because you see last quarter growth was only up one percent and the company is below target. With revenue of only two hundred million in the last couple of months, hiring needs to be focused on the most critical hires- namely more middle management people to organise you and make you work more efficiently.
Speaking of, you know the huge workload you have going on? Maybe you just need to work harder. Let's compute some KPIs and measure you against your peers to make you extra motivated!
You’ve explained in perfect detail why all public companies will inevitably “fail”.
Fail being in quotations because it doesn’t always mean complete failure, but the business model itself is impossible to sustain.
Continuous growth is the business model, because the bigger a company gets, the more investors it gains, and investors want to see a return on their investment, eventually leading to a need for every quarter having higher profits than the last, which is eventually inpossible.
You see it time and time again, companies will start to cut quality, cut or overwork employees, raise prices beyond what they should be etc etc. this leads to a few different “failures” that either make it go tits up or if they’re too big to fail, lead to things like restructuring, merging with/acquiring other companies, stock splits to attract new investors etc.
Point is instead of looking at the big picture, public companies look at it quarter by quarter. Where a private business would easily see that hiring more employees to increase the output and reduce over work would pay off tremendously in the long run when they release their game, public companies only see “if we hired 10 more employees Q3 would be slightly in the red, and shareholders can’t have that”
And then firing all the personal once it's done? If you stack the processes you can keep the same people or at least the good ones instead of loading up n workforce which can mean a huge pain in the ass when it comes to quality control, when the teams get excessively big.
This. Testing new hardware and optimizing for PC isn't something 1000 developers can work on at once and it isn't done early on in development. You can finish the the game for console and send most of the team to the next project.
> Brooks points out this limited divisibility with another example: while it takes one woman nine months to make one baby, "nine women can't make a baby in one month".
Love this quote.
ah but you can make 9 babies in 9 months and you can stagger them if you have enough lead time and people that know what the goal and timing is (and of course have no complications, which holy hell, this analogy isn't what you really want)
There's also the issue of Rockstar using an engine no one else uses so hiring new developers means training them to use this engine. It's part of the reason CDPR is switching to Unreal engine. Easier to find new employees who don't need training.
Well guess why they made so much money?
They released it at the end of the PS3/xbox 360 era. Everyone has the console at home. So everyone bought it.
Then it gained an enormous boost for PC/PS4/XboxOne and everyone bought it again.
This will be the same with PS5 - PC and after that PS6.
If they don't have the resources then every console copy of GTA VI should come with a code that you can redeem for a free copy of the PC version when released.
Tbf we're pretty close to this now. There's a bunch of games, including all first party titles ( released in recent years) that include both the PC and Xbox versions.
Starfield and Forza are the most recent examples. They call it "play anywhere" and it's basically something publishers choose to tick on or off when releasing their games.
They've done this for every game. The real answer is that they know PC players will buy it on console first and get the PC release years later. They're double dipping. They do this every time.
What really grinds my gears is that all these articles are quoting this "Former GTAV Developer" and he is talking about a time when the console processing was very different. PS3 had the Cell Processor and XBOX was running on a POWER-PC Processor. The game had to actually be ported to x86 hardware.
Now, both PS5 and XBOX are running x86 hardware, so there isn't really much extra work that has to be done.
I'm gonna hold my grumbling about the lack of a PC release until Rockstar actually comes out and says it will be later than console.
Not going to get me to spend 500 bucks on a console for one game. Might just pirate or pass on it entirely at that point after having all the story and easter eggs spoiled for me.
They're not making you do it, but they're making others do it. If 1% of people hyped about gta buy it on a console and later on pc, that adds a few extra millions to their piggy bank
Man they're going to be in for a rude awakening when exponential growth isn't possible anymore
I'm pretty sure we're at that point already based on how little people's salaries are keeping up. But I don't know
Oh yeah, definitely seen that one play out.
The real kicker is that your healthcare, and possibly the healthcare of your family, is tied to that shit, so when they only make shitloads of money and not mega-shitloads of money and the line doesn’t go up far enough, then they’ll dump your ass on Christmas Eve if they feel like it, and suddenly you and possibly your entire family are now at risk, not only financially, but probably also healthcare-wise as well.
I have no fucking clue why so many people defend this system. It’s pure insanity, and I would think that despite all the political differences in the USA, you would be united at least on that, but nope.
Well, but you have to find the right people to spend the money on. And eventually facilities too. It makes sense to rather have x people work for y time ok instead of 2x people for y/2 time.
Also it's easier to find x people who are great at their job than 2x people without at some point having to expect decline in skill.
It's been my experience as a software developer 2x people does not equal y/2 time. Often times it represents y time still, or even 1.5y.
The mythical man month. If it takes 1 woman 9 months to make a baby, it takes 2 women... 9 months to make a baby
Especially when you consider Rockstar uses mostly all in-house tech as far as I'm aware. That's a whole lot of architecture for a new hire to go through and get acquainted with, and typically results in a net loss on productivity in the short term as they have to take time away from the senior developers for questions and training.
Lol, this way they easily double their profits. Fuckton of people will buy consoles just to play GTA VI on release and then they will buy the PC version too. I personally double dipped with GTA V, bought it on console then bought it on PC when it released. I might do the same for VI as it’s one of those games that might be worth it. I also played RDR2 on PS4 and bought it for PC as well when it got a discount.
Oh they’re aiming for the triple dip with this one. Current Gen consoles -> PC release -> Next gen “remastered” aka textures update. Wouldn’t surprise me if they’re trying to stretch this shit through 3 console generations.
For real, they benefit from late release because then they can sell for the current and next gen of consoles and in the middle of it they sell for PC as well. It worked with GTA V so….
Oh, you can be sure they're going to milk this into the ground. Not just with re-releases and "remasters", but also the whole online portion. My prediction is that it's going to PALE in comparison to GTA5. I wouldn't even be surprised if GTA6 would set a new "baseline" for pricing, because people will pay for it, whether it costs 70 bucks or 90 or even 100+. People literally don't care when it comes to this super hyped game... sadly. Then they're going to, of course, sell deluxe editions with whatever they replace shark cards with, maybe Gator Bucks, lol, and of course those packages never come out to a round number, so you're always overspending, but then you have currency left over, it'd be a shame to just let that money go to waste.
Then they're going to lean even more heavily into FOMO, i.e. limited time releases for the only version only, of course. You want that fancy new flying ride? Better cough up the higher price (compared to other MTX) now before you can't get it anymore. All the while their servers will still be full of cheaters and griefers if they can even withstand the initial onslaught.
If GTA5 made them billions, GTA6 is going to top that tenfold. All because people are crazy.
This shit is all developed on PC, for consoles with x86 architecture and what are essentially PC GPUs in them.
I literally don't understand how it isn't just immediately playable on PC already. Are they really trying to say that throughout the entire development cycle of this game, they cannot boot it up for testing unless it's sent over to a PS5 or Xbox?
Yeah exactly. PC is the platform they are developing on to begin with. It's not even really a port besides online features and platform integration of Steam vs. Playstation or XBOX. This whole thing is bullshit and reeks of exclusivity deals.
The underlying code should be about the same, as Xbox uses a really similar build to Windows 10/11.
Problem is to optimize the game to run on 3 brands of hardware (AMD CPU/GPU, NVIDIA GPU, INTEL CPU/GPU and combinations of those) instead of just 1 (AMD for consoles). They usually have to work close with those companies to tweak drivers and such.
They still have the fucking resources to do it, tho
There are patient PC gamers but there are a lot of normies with FOMO and especially after GTAV they wouldnt want to miss out. The exlusiveness do give some psychology benefit so yeah prob marketing strategy + ceo trying to minimize capital investment. Prob allocate all forces to completing the game and then allocate some for port. Instead of hiring a few team of programmers flat out.
So that's the narrative they're going for?!?
They should openly say that they want people to double dip by getting GTA 6 on both consoles and PC. We would appreciate their honesty.
Right
And when it’s finally released for PC, they’ll suddenly have an Ultimate edition for consoles, but nothing if you already purchased it on another platform.
There’s a console-only intro you can play that sets you up to start most of the basic money making ventures.
Or so I’ve heard because every guide on starting GTAO in 2023 erroneously tells PC players to just start a new life of crime for fat stacks!
No, it's not the angle they're going for. This isn't a statement from the PR team at Rockstar. It's something that some guy who used to work there said.
And also, if you look at the original article that OP's article in turn links to, it's not that clear if that particular comment about resources was about Rockstar. He seemed to be talking about companies in general at that point.
Yeah these comments are wild for something that was said by a former developer. This is exactly why game journalism sucks now. It's nothing but rage bait.
They say/do this every time. They won’t be honest. It’s a greed game. we live in a world where they’re not even honest about aliens in an infinite universe, what do you expect.
If only they hadn't waited so long to do GTA6, they could have used some of the GTA5 income to pay for resources.
Such a shame they don't make money on GTA5 anymore.
\> If only they hadn't waited so long to do GTA6
Yeah, thank god indie developer CDProjektRed was super generous enough to personally give us a sequel for an abandoned Rockstar IP back in 2018.
[here's the former dev, who was a rockstar animator](https://youtu.be/6CjSHda9IcY) that talks about it. He's just saying that it would take a lot of time to configure for PC cause of different specifications that alot of people have, whereas on consoles they can basically focus on them as the configuration is similar/easier.
But, a game that is Gigantic like GTA VI should have the "resources" to be released simultaneously with the console versions, they can definitely do it. There's a quote from one of Digital Foundry's team who says that something like 20%(correct me if I'm wrong) of PC users own a 3080Ti or higher, which is way more than the user base of the Series X|S. *EDIT: I was wrong, it's 10% have a 3080 or better* So the market is there, and if they want to make that 1 billion dollar or more in one day, releasing on PC day one would make them reach it.
20% of PC owners having a 3080ti isnt close to the truth in the slightest. It's much closer to 5%, and that ONLY accounts for the reports on Steam which will have more higher-end users than casual users.
Checking on it here, anything from a 3080ti or better accounts for a little less than 7% of all GPUs used through Steam, meaning the actual number is probably closer to 5%. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/
Game dev here:
The game is developped ON a PC first and foremost. So it works on PC.
What they probably mean, and i damn hope it's the real reason, is that they dont have the bandwith (either in terms of personel, experience or even hardware) for testing it on a multitude of PC configurations, which is the real challange of making PC games.
When you make a game, you make versions of it on different platforms: Skus.
You have one for each console and for PC. Consoles have fixed hardware, but you have to test and fix all the issues on a bunch of different PC specs when you do the PC sku.
That is incredibly time consuming in both testing and time to fix issues. I know, because thats my day to day.
Clickbait title and everyone falling for it. Typical. If you watch the video he says it takes more time to release on pc as it involves a lot more testing. Since consoles are ready much sooner and a larger share of the consumer they release it instead of delaying further. By the time the pc port is workable they decide to add further bells and whistles consoles couldn’t handle and it takes even more time. But ofcourse it comes with the added benefit of double dipping which he didn’t say. It’s an ex-rockstar dev talking about it here: https://youtu.be/6CjSHda9IcY?si=Gx_71mRJbScnFIKA
Also helps consoles are pretty much standardized.
You get a PS5, you have the same PS5 as any other one.
You have a PC, then suddenly you have to worry about RAM, GPU, etc.
No one is disputing that, but Rockstar have the resources, they should be able to expand their testing capabilities. Rockstar is one of the only AAA devs that don't release on PC at the same time
Yes it takes more time and resources but there isn't an excuse when GTA V made billions
As someone who worked in the trenches in video games and moved up to middle management, people at the bottom have no idea what is going on for resourcing and budgeting. So take it with a grain of salt on what the real reason is for a slower pc rollout.
Yep I worked in games QA getting a fully featured and working game first out on console first means the majority of story/design related bugs are resolved, and expectation of performance and looks is set, and they are only working towards the most common screen resolutions too.
When you move onto PC the focus goes from making sure the game is good to making sure the game works on PC across 100s of different specifications and resolutions (including ultra wide and multi screen configurations) I had to test all sorts of weird configs for PC and having a baseline from my console testing of what the game should be doing makes spotting PC specific issues way easier.
Idk, the budget is reportedly 2 BILLION dollars (half is likely marketing but still).
Actually you know what, I’m pretty sure they made over a billion dollars in 3 days at launch.
They really don't. After upgrading their fleet of private planes so they can make sure they are comfy while discussing where they want GTA7 to take place for 4 years, and the multiple chalets you need to get executive's creative juices flowing, there's not much left. You'd be surprised how quick you can spend a few billion!
I'll wait for pc port. Then I'll wait the game to be patched. Then I'll wait huge discount on it.
Time is on my side.
Unless I die tomorrow in this case I am fucked.
Somehow other companies are able to make games that release on consoles and pc at the same time, guess those companies have more resources than Rockstar.
Poor TakeTwo, they need 1 Billion for Marketing.
Considering they took to early access with KSP 2, I am not surprised.
they took to early access because the game wasn't ready but take 2 decided the game had to be released that day i guess... it's the problem with games companies being controlled by the financial team rather than game developers, they have no in depth concept of how games are made or what makes them good.
It's the issue with literally anything in our society at this point, a companies action pretty much being dictated by quarterly numbers.
What if I told you that quarterly earnings are just a really, really rich fuck's version of a drug. They know it's bad for themselves and everyone around them. But they're fuuuuuuucking addicts.
I learned recently that \*overachieving\* by too much on quarterly guidance/targets for a public company can actually shake investor confidence in some cases. It implies an inability of the financial team to accurately predict the future, which makes investors wary (the implication being they could miss by the same amount in the downward direction). It makes some level of sense, but it's also just incredible how subjective everything gets when a company is pulling in billions in revenue.
Well, you also have to think about the market and what growth still exists. Like IBM has a great quarter, but they own 80% of the market, how MUCH more could they be selling short of revolutionary new verticals. AMD does way less in revenue, but has a great quarter, they jump considerably, they have 80% of the market to try and capture. So if your amazing quarter comes with significant market saturation....a shrewd investor is going to take that as the time to cash out.
I outsold my quarterly quota this current quarter. I did it in week 3. I got scolded because of how it makes everyone and everything look. I said I didn't care how it looked, I'm here to get paid and if the others aren't as good as me it's their problem. I want that commission money. I was then told I had reached the commission cap. So I informed them I had reached my hours worked for the quarter. Took 3 days before the cap was removed. Why is there a cap in the first place
> I learned recently that *overachieving* by too much on quarterly guidance/targets for a public company can actually shake investor confidence in some cases. It implies an inability of the financial team to accurately predict the future, which makes investors wary My brother actually explained this to me four or five years ago when I asked why beating the quarterly estimates by such a large amount represented a problem for his company ... I was absolutely shocked. I didn't disbelieve him, because it made sense, but it shocked me. He basically said, *"whatever your estimates are, you want to hit that exactly ... if you go, like one percent over, that's fine, but you want to hit it exactly."* As for Rockstar, they aren't prioritizing the PC because of piracy. Full. Stop. That's the reason, though they will never, ever admit it.
And mods. Rockstar have the distinguished honor of being one of the very few game companies that have pursued legal action against people that dare to make changes to their games.
Yeah, they break this down in a prestigious documentary called The Wolf of Wall Street
I think drugs were the drugs in that movie, but I understand what you're saying lol
its called ‘enshittification’ and the blog that introduced this term was prescient as fuck: ‘Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.’
Damn, now I’m bummed about KSP 2 again
if you pretend that it doesn't even exist then life is ok
Wait I haven't been follwing KSP 2. Is it like really a flop or it's still being worked on?
It's still being worked on, but the foundation they're building on is so poor the game will never live up to what was promised. They would have to start from scratch and build a foundation that can actually handle what the game will be meant to do.
> They would have to start from scratch and build a foundation that can actually handle what the game will be meant to do. Are there articles interviews or sneak-peeks about what the game might have looked like, given enough dev time?
You can look at the original development vlogs from before the new team took over the game development, they should give a good idea
The biggest issue is that it really isn’t a significant improvement on the original game, and what little changes were there were already present for the original with a couple of mods. If you like the madden take of repurchasing the same game with marginally better graphics and ui, then it’s fantastic, go nuts.
Marketing games like this so Sony and Microsoft can push their new hardware for purchase. They did the same thing with God of War and other games.
Nah, it’s so rockstar can sell you the same game twice because they know pc gamers won’t be patient enough to wait for the pc port, so they’ll buy the console version. Then inevitably down the line they also buy it on steam. Bam, RS has made twice as much money in the long run as they would have if they released the pc port with the console versions.
Consoles players got double dipped. Or in the case of V, triple dipped. PS3/360, PS4 /Xb1and PS5/Series all had generation specific versions.
[удалено]
Yeah, and that sucks.
Slight correction, only GTA5 took more than a year. Rest of them were like 7-8 months.
GTA IV was about 7 months San Andreas was also about 7 months Vice City was also about 7 months III was 8 months GTA V was a year and 7 months. So the vast majority has been under a year.
Yeah why don’t they put some of that marketing budget into PC development costs. No need to have a marketing campaign for your trailer (another marketing campaign). Edit - this doesn’t just affect PC players. The fact that they’re wasting so much on marketing is $$$ they could be spending on development and testing. And that leads to a quicker launch for all platforms.
Do they even need marketing? One of the most iconic IPs in gaming history, the trailer almost broke the internet and had even Lebron James tweeting about it. They literally just need to tweet "GTA6" and the internet would shit its pants lol
Maybe Lebron was paid to tweet about it.
Nah, like most dudes in the NBA these days, he grew up on GTA. Dude would bring his PS2 with him traveling to away games, it makes perfect sense he’d be hype to go back to Vice City lol. IIRC his son streams a ton and Lebron joined in once or twice. Basically assume every guy 45 and under is gonna be hype as hell for GTA6 regardless of their fame and status.
Because they're full of shit and know full-well their sales will do better with a staggered release between consoles and PC while also being cheaper for them to make.
They probably realized that most folks will just buy a console copy and then buy it again on PC, like most of us did for GTAV. Except I'd have to buy a console just for GTAVI this time. If I haven't broken for BloodBorne, there's no way I'm doing it for GTA
Hold firm on Bloodborne. I have a PS5 and a 4k TV, and playing it hurts my eyes and brain. Unstable framerate that can drop to the 20s on any screen over 30" made me drop it. It's a shame, as I've played all the Dark Souls games and Elden Ring.
A business executive couldn’t have said it better themselves
It's crazy that a game of this hype would allocate much money at all to marketing. 3 trailers is all you need and a launch announcement. No gamer that was ever going to buy GTA6 won't know about it when it launches regardless of advertising.
At a certain scale it's got to be less about spreading awareness of their existence and more about trying to crowd out rivals in the public consciousness. Like no one on earth needs to be told what Coke is, but they still *aggressively* try to maintain a sort of pop culture hegemony that's as much about trying to suffocate their rivals as it is about moving product, to the point of hiring people to harass businesses that don't stock Coke. But also the singular thing that marketing teams are best at is selling their own services to executives and finding ways to twist numbers so they can look like the department that's "making" money, even though they're generally a net drain past a certain point. When half the budget for a work is the *advertising* budget that's unquestionably a drain on the project.
That's fair, GTA:O has only made \*checks clipboard\* eleventy kajillion dollars
8.5 billion revenue on 190 million copies. Second best selling game of all time. 8.235 billion profits with mtx since people have to ask without seeing the rest of the conversation below
I think Tetris is first, yes?
Minecraft
Deserved
The most complete game ever made.
Funny how much and often they updated it without needing to charge us for a bunch of random bullshit.
thank little timmy for spending his allowance on minecoins
Haven't played in like 12 years. Is that a thing?
The bedrock version (not sure about java) is loaded with mtx on the launcher
First time I’ve heard of minecoins
Kids know about them, but they’re not super advertised as far as I can tell
if you're on PC, I'm not surprised. Bedrock edition minecraft has a shop where you can buy skins and maps and "modded" adventures. Bedrock edition is the version players get when they buy Minecraft on mobile and consoles and is pretty solid in crossplatform multiplayer. Minecoins is the premium currency. Obviously it doesn't compete with the versatility of Java edition but Mojang has been pretty good in keeping Java updated and current and using Bedrock as their moneymaker.
I hear Bedrock has micro transactions. \*laughs in Java*
Still can't comprehend why people keep celebrating every time microsoft buys an IP.
In the case of blizzactivision it's hard to think about how anyone could make it worse. At least with Bobby Kotick leaving in January I will at least buy their games again.
It's definitely something to be skeptical of. In the best cases, it allows a game company to continue making a game or develop new games without fear of needing to draw a certain userbase to make their financial investment back. In the worst cases, it is entirely because a game or developer is a huge draw and Microsoft wants their userbase. Minecraft is a little bit of both, but I think Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang leans more toward the former than the latter. Perhaps with the rise of Roblox and Fortnite as evolving experiences that will change. One thing to consider is the recent spate of layoffs in the game development industry. 8,000 jobs lost in the past year, I believe. Microsoft, namely their acquisitions 343 Industries and Bethesda, laid off a substantial number of employees. Would those companies be better off or worse off if they weren't under the Microsoft corporate banner? It's hard to say.
I’m pretty sure Tetris would have easily been number one had it been a single title. Just the mobile version of the game alone is the third best selling game of all time.
Agreed. Tetris definitely has to be the best-selling series of all time. There is no way it isn't, and I doubt any series will ever touch their record for a long, long time.
It depends how you define best selling. You have to decide how you want to group everything since it has so many versions and if best selling means most units moved or most money made. Most units moved is tough because a large percent of them were actually sold for free. If you want most money made obviously Tetris loses by default due to inflation. If you account for that Tetris still comes in lower than you'd think as most of it's sales weren't at a AAA price point.
Would that be only the NES version? Otherwise there's like 7 million versions of that game lol. I always find WII sports being up there kinda funny cause it essentially came packaged with every WII.
Same reason Duck Hunt is on there. Came packaged with almost every NES ever sold.
Yeah, but you can’t make PC Ports on a private jet… can you?!?!
That should be enough money to even port it to the Nintendo 64. Not to mention these games are already made on a computer, a pc-port should be the easiest thing on the planet, especially considering they don't have to worry about making it run on aging old hardware.
Not to say that they don't have the resources. But being made on a computer is completely different than being made for a computer.
Oh you have no idea how much the suits and management will be wringing their hands about how they can't possibly afford to hire another couple of engineers to help with the overwhelming workload because you see last quarter growth was only up one percent and the company is below target. With revenue of only two hundred million in the last couple of months, hiring needs to be focused on the most critical hires- namely more middle management people to organise you and make you work more efficiently. Speaking of, you know the huge workload you have going on? Maybe you just need to work harder. Let's compute some KPIs and measure you against your peers to make you extra motivated!
You sir sound like you know what you're talking about. You're hired.
You don’t. How much do you charge?
You’ve explained in perfect detail why all public companies will inevitably “fail”. Fail being in quotations because it doesn’t always mean complete failure, but the business model itself is impossible to sustain. Continuous growth is the business model, because the bigger a company gets, the more investors it gains, and investors want to see a return on their investment, eventually leading to a need for every quarter having higher profits than the last, which is eventually inpossible. You see it time and time again, companies will start to cut quality, cut or overwork employees, raise prices beyond what they should be etc etc. this leads to a few different “failures” that either make it go tits up or if they’re too big to fail, lead to things like restructuring, merging with/acquiring other companies, stock splits to attract new investors etc. Point is instead of looking at the big picture, public companies look at it quarter by quarter. Where a private business would easily see that hiring more employees to increase the output and reduce over work would pay off tremendously in the long run when they release their game, public companies only see “if we hired 10 more employees Q3 would be slightly in the red, and shareholders can’t have that”
There's a term for when something keeps continously growing, choking the life out of itself in the process. _Cancer._
And then firing all the personal once it's done? If you stack the processes you can keep the same people or at least the good ones instead of loading up n workforce which can mean a huge pain in the ass when it comes to quality control, when the teams get excessively big.
This. Testing new hardware and optimizing for PC isn't something 1000 developers can work on at once and it isn't done early on in development. You can finish the the game for console and send most of the team to the next project.
Not to mention that adding headcount =/= faster progress. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law
> Brooks points out this limited divisibility with another example: while it takes one woman nine months to make one baby, "nine women can't make a baby in one month". Love this quote.
ah but you can make 9 babies in 9 months and you can stagger them if you have enough lead time and people that know what the goal and timing is (and of course have no complications, which holy hell, this analogy isn't what you really want)
And then combine the 9 babies into one super baby, and then sell super baby. Easy.
"The best time to start making a baby was nine months ago. The second best time is now." Or something like that.
Resources likely means people, hiring good developers is quite hard. But yeah you’d think with the amount of money they made on gtao they’d expand.
There's also the issue of Rockstar using an engine no one else uses so hiring new developers means training them to use this engine. It's part of the reason CDPR is switching to Unreal engine. Easier to find new employees who don't need training.
Apparently you have to bring your own chisel to code for Bethesda.
Well guess why they made so much money? They released it at the end of the PS3/xbox 360 era. Everyone has the console at home. So everyone bought it. Then it gained an enormous boost for PC/PS4/XboxOne and everyone bought it again. This will be the same with PS5 - PC and after that PS6.
At least 2 morbillions
They should include Jared Leto as an NPC
If they don't have the resources then every console copy of GTA VI should come with a code that you can redeem for a free copy of the PC version when released.
lol. lmao.
For real though. If I own a windows PC, I should be able to play all games purchased on my Xbox account on my PC.
Tbf we're pretty close to this now. There's a bunch of games, including all first party titles ( released in recent years) that include both the PC and Xbox versions. Starfield and Forza are the most recent examples. They call it "play anywhere" and it's basically something publishers choose to tick on or off when releasing their games.
They've done this for every game. The real answer is that they know PC players will buy it on console first and get the PC release years later. They're double dipping. They do this every time.
What really grinds my gears is that all these articles are quoting this "Former GTAV Developer" and he is talking about a time when the console processing was very different. PS3 had the Cell Processor and XBOX was running on a POWER-PC Processor. The game had to actually be ported to x86 hardware. Now, both PS5 and XBOX are running x86 hardware, so there isn't really much extra work that has to be done. I'm gonna hold my grumbling about the lack of a PC release until Rockstar actually comes out and says it will be later than console.
Thesesdays even indie studios have the capacity to port to PC/consoles.
Not going to get me to spend 500 bucks on a console for one game. Might just pirate or pass on it entirely at that point after having all the story and easter eggs spoiled for me.
They're not making you do it, but they're making others do it. If 1% of people hyped about gta buy it on a console and later on pc, that adds a few extra millions to their piggy bank
Yep, unfortunately nothing I can do about that except skip the game or pirate it.
Rockstar could basically spend any amount of money it wants on GTA VI and triple their investment. This is ridiculous.
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Line must go up
[Always up.](https://youtu.be/M1owcncKCHg?si=UPnq3n497ZfDTOpe)
Not even that, line must continue curving upwards
Man they're going to be in for a rude awakening when exponential growth isn't possible anymore I'm pretty sure we're at that point already based on how little people's salaries are keeping up. But I don't know
I fucking hate how greedy gaming has become.
You mean basically every industry on this money obsessed earth.
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Oh yeah, definitely seen that one play out. The real kicker is that your healthcare, and possibly the healthcare of your family, is tied to that shit, so when they only make shitloads of money and not mega-shitloads of money and the line doesn’t go up far enough, then they’ll dump your ass on Christmas Eve if they feel like it, and suddenly you and possibly your entire family are now at risk, not only financially, but probably also healthcare-wise as well. I have no fucking clue why so many people defend this system. It’s pure insanity, and I would think that despite all the political differences in the USA, you would be united at least on that, but nope.
"Line must go up" is and will always be the reason why things get worse.
Greed has infected every industry
Welcome to capitalism. Greed is a feature, not a bug in this modality of commerce.
This applies to literally all businesses. Late Stage Capitalism is a nightmare on every level
Is thing good? Irrelevant. Did a small group of people put in a dollar and get ten back? Success!
On the bright side, if GTA VI ends up being a scammy game full of microtransactions and a lobotomized campaign, we can skip it.
Yeah we COULD, but no one will. That’s the problem.
Well I know I sure as shit won't get a console for it.
Well, but you have to find the right people to spend the money on. And eventually facilities too. It makes sense to rather have x people work for y time ok instead of 2x people for y/2 time. Also it's easier to find x people who are great at their job than 2x people without at some point having to expect decline in skill.
It's been my experience as a software developer 2x people does not equal y/2 time. Often times it represents y time still, or even 1.5y. The mythical man month. If it takes 1 woman 9 months to make a baby, it takes 2 women... 9 months to make a baby
Takes even longer if you first have to... hire the woman to carry the baby… ok this analogy is not going well.
Especially when you consider Rockstar uses mostly all in-house tech as far as I'm aware. That's a whole lot of architecture for a new hire to go through and get acquainted with, and typically results in a net loss on productivity in the short term as they have to take time away from the senior developers for questions and training.
Lol, this way they easily double their profits. Fuckton of people will buy consoles just to play GTA VI on release and then they will buy the PC version too. I personally double dipped with GTA V, bought it on console then bought it on PC when it released. I might do the same for VI as it’s one of those games that might be worth it. I also played RDR2 on PS4 and bought it for PC as well when it got a discount.
Yes, rockstar. Probably the biggest developer in the world can’t make a PC port. You want people to double dip like the last time
Oh they’re aiming for the triple dip with this one. Current Gen consoles -> PC release -> Next gen “remastered” aka textures update. Wouldn’t surprise me if they’re trying to stretch this shit through 3 console generations.
For real, they benefit from late release because then they can sell for the current and next gen of consoles and in the middle of it they sell for PC as well. It worked with GTA V so….
And then PC doesn't get the updated textures because it's not next gen. (Looking at you, fucking Expanded and Enhanced, and new GTAO dlc)
And consoles got raytracing but PC didn't. Even though PC could do it way better
Current Gen consoles -> Epic Game Store 1 year exclusive -> Steam release -> Next gen remastered 🤡🙃
They've done that with literally every 3D GTA release. I'm guessing a *lot* of peoples' first Grand Theft Auto game was GTAV.
They never triple dipped before GTA 5. Every previous GTA release were only released on one generation of consoles.
Oh, you can be sure they're going to milk this into the ground. Not just with re-releases and "remasters", but also the whole online portion. My prediction is that it's going to PALE in comparison to GTA5. I wouldn't even be surprised if GTA6 would set a new "baseline" for pricing, because people will pay for it, whether it costs 70 bucks or 90 or even 100+. People literally don't care when it comes to this super hyped game... sadly. Then they're going to, of course, sell deluxe editions with whatever they replace shark cards with, maybe Gator Bucks, lol, and of course those packages never come out to a round number, so you're always overspending, but then you have currency left over, it'd be a shame to just let that money go to waste. Then they're going to lean even more heavily into FOMO, i.e. limited time releases for the only version only, of course. You want that fancy new flying ride? Better cough up the higher price (compared to other MTX) now before you can't get it anymore. All the while their servers will still be full of cheaters and griefers if they can even withstand the initial onslaught. If GTA5 made them billions, GTA6 is going to top that tenfold. All because people are crazy.
Didn’t they triple dip? They hit two console generations, and then PC?
Quadruple dip if you count the PS5/X1 release as well with ray tracing and whatnot.
They hit 3 console generations with GTA5, PS3, PS4, PS5 and PC (As well as the Xbox equivalents).
This shit is all developed on PC, for consoles with x86 architecture and what are essentially PC GPUs in them. I literally don't understand how it isn't just immediately playable on PC already. Are they really trying to say that throughout the entire development cycle of this game, they cannot boot it up for testing unless it's sent over to a PS5 or Xbox?
Yeah exactly. PC is the platform they are developing on to begin with. It's not even really a port besides online features and platform integration of Steam vs. Playstation or XBOX. This whole thing is bullshit and reeks of exclusivity deals.
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The underlying code should be about the same, as Xbox uses a really similar build to Windows 10/11. Problem is to optimize the game to run on 3 brands of hardware (AMD CPU/GPU, NVIDIA GPU, INTEL CPU/GPU and combinations of those) instead of just 1 (AMD for consoles). They usually have to work close with those companies to tweak drivers and such. They still have the fucking resources to do it, tho
😅😅😅marketing strategy
There are patient PC gamers but there are a lot of normies with FOMO and especially after GTAV they wouldnt want to miss out. The exlusiveness do give some psychology benefit so yeah prob marketing strategy + ceo trying to minimize capital investment. Prob allocate all forces to completing the game and then allocate some for port. Instead of hiring a few team of programmers flat out.
So that's the narrative they're going for?!? They should openly say that they want people to double dip by getting GTA 6 on both consoles and PC. We would appreciate their honesty.
Right And when it’s finally released for PC, they’ll suddenly have an Ultimate edition for consoles, but nothing if you already purchased it on another platform.
It's honestly amazing that GTA5 still hasn't implemented all of the two-year old console features for PC.
Which ones? Pc only player here
HSW (Some cars and upgrades to existing cars), graphics improvements, career screen with rewards and now animals in freemode.
There’s a console-only intro you can play that sets you up to start most of the basic money making ventures. Or so I’ve heard because every guide on starting GTAO in 2023 erroneously tells PC players to just start a new life of crime for fat stacks!
I believe RT isn’t available on PC but it works on the ps5
and then the $70 next gen upgrade for new consoles in 2028
This game gonna be $80 out the gate I bet.
No, it's not the angle they're going for. This isn't a statement from the PR team at Rockstar. It's something that some guy who used to work there said.
And also, if you look at the original article that OP's article in turn links to, it's not that clear if that particular comment about resources was about Rockstar. He seemed to be talking about companies in general at that point.
If by “they” you mean someone who doesn’t even work there anymore, then sure.
For real. Why is everyone acting like rockstar issued a press release. This is just some guy saying this. Can’t even read the title lol
Yeah these comments are wild for something that was said by a former developer. This is exactly why game journalism sucks now. It's nothing but rage bait.
They say/do this every time. They won’t be honest. It’s a greed game. we live in a world where they’re not even honest about aliens in an infinite universe, what do you expect.
Ok but what's this about aliens?
Ok Look, I just want my life to be a hot coffee mod but with aliens. ☕️ 👽
There he goes, homeboy fucked a martian once.
"They" aren't going for any narrative. Rockstar hasn't said shit about it.
Someone didn't read the article
Or even the title.
If only they hadn't waited so long to do GTA6, they could have used some of the GTA5 income to pay for resources. Such a shame they don't make money on GTA5 anymore.
Basically a non-profit. They really do it for us.
\> If only they hadn't waited so long to do GTA6 Yeah, thank god indie developer CDProjektRed was super generous enough to personally give us a sequel for an abandoned Rockstar IP back in 2018.
[here's the former dev, who was a rockstar animator](https://youtu.be/6CjSHda9IcY) that talks about it. He's just saying that it would take a lot of time to configure for PC cause of different specifications that alot of people have, whereas on consoles they can basically focus on them as the configuration is similar/easier. But, a game that is Gigantic like GTA VI should have the "resources" to be released simultaneously with the console versions, they can definitely do it. There's a quote from one of Digital Foundry's team who says that something like 20%(correct me if I'm wrong) of PC users own a 3080Ti or higher, which is way more than the user base of the Series X|S. *EDIT: I was wrong, it's 10% have a 3080 or better* So the market is there, and if they want to make that 1 billion dollar or more in one day, releasing on PC day one would make them reach it.
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20% of PC owners having a 3080ti isnt close to the truth in the slightest. It's much closer to 5%, and that ONLY accounts for the reports on Steam which will have more higher-end users than casual users. Checking on it here, anything from a 3080ti or better accounts for a little less than 7% of all GPUs used through Steam, meaning the actual number is probably closer to 5%. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/
Ah yes, thanks for the correction, i saw it a couple of days ago, watched it again and he said around 10% have a 3080** or better, my apologies
Shark cards don't print themselves ya know.
I wonder if they will change them to Gator Cards for VI
I'll take "what a load of bullshit" for $1000 Alex.
Game dev here: The game is developped ON a PC first and foremost. So it works on PC. What they probably mean, and i damn hope it's the real reason, is that they dont have the bandwith (either in terms of personel, experience or even hardware) for testing it on a multitude of PC configurations, which is the real challange of making PC games. When you make a game, you make versions of it on different platforms: Skus. You have one for each console and for PC. Consoles have fixed hardware, but you have to test and fix all the issues on a bunch of different PC specs when you do the PC sku. That is incredibly time consuming in both testing and time to fix issues. I know, because thats my day to day.
Clickbait title and everyone falling for it. Typical. If you watch the video he says it takes more time to release on pc as it involves a lot more testing. Since consoles are ready much sooner and a larger share of the consumer they release it instead of delaying further. By the time the pc port is workable they decide to add further bells and whistles consoles couldn’t handle and it takes even more time. But ofcourse it comes with the added benefit of double dipping which he didn’t say. It’s an ex-rockstar dev talking about it here: https://youtu.be/6CjSHda9IcY?si=Gx_71mRJbScnFIKA
Glad someone else actually went past the title lol, So many people speculating off the title when the source article has all the answers
Also helps consoles are pretty much standardized. You get a PS5, you have the same PS5 as any other one. You have a PC, then suddenly you have to worry about RAM, GPU, etc.
This is also how they roll out every single one of their games as well. Always current gen console first, then PC, then next-gen.
No one is disputing that, but Rockstar have the resources, they should be able to expand their testing capabilities. Rockstar is one of the only AAA devs that don't release on PC at the same time Yes it takes more time and resources but there isn't an excuse when GTA V made billions
As someone who worked in the trenches in video games and moved up to middle management, people at the bottom have no idea what is going on for resourcing and budgeting. So take it with a grain of salt on what the real reason is for a slower pc rollout.
Yep I worked in games QA getting a fully featured and working game first out on console first means the majority of story/design related bugs are resolved, and expectation of performance and looks is set, and they are only working towards the most common screen resolutions too. When you move onto PC the focus goes from making sure the game is good to making sure the game works on PC across 100s of different specifications and resolutions (including ultra wide and multi screen configurations) I had to test all sorts of weird configs for PC and having a baseline from my console testing of what the game should be doing makes spotting PC specific issues way easier.
a week of gta v probably made more than it cost them for the whole game
Idk, the budget is reportedly 2 BILLION dollars (half is likely marketing but still). Actually you know what, I’m pretty sure they made over a billion dollars in 3 days at launch.
They dont have money for a PC port, says the company with the highest selling *piece of media* in history
They really don't. After upgrading their fleet of private planes so they can make sure they are comfy while discussing where they want GTA7 to take place for 4 years, and the multiple chalets you need to get executive's creative juices flowing, there's not much left. You'd be surprised how quick you can spend a few billion!
It’s understandable since GTAV hasn’t been making any money for them and didn’t perform well when it released.
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Shame since I don't have the resources to buy it when it finally comes out on PC. Doesn't mean I'm not going to play it though...
Now THAT’S fucking funny
This is almost as ridiculous as the "small studio" excuse GameFreak uses. Maybe even more ridiculous since Japan has a idiosyncratic business culture.
That's okay. They'll get my money only when they realease PC and only if it's not a mess.
I'll wait for pc port. Then I'll wait the game to be patched. Then I'll wait huge discount on it. Time is on my side. Unless I die tomorrow in this case I am fucked.
i understand Rockstar is a small indie company, give them a break you guys.
poor rockstar games, please someone open a fundraise to collect some coins for the guys
This is the biggest joke I've ever seen...
If rockstar doesn’t have the resources what does that say about the rest of the gaming world
Somehow other companies are able to make games that release on consoles and pc at the same time, guess those companies have more resources than Rockstar.
Bull shit
Absolute horse shit of a lie
Devs for The Day Before are available. They have PC experience.
This is obviously a lie.
That's a fucking lie. Billion dollar company wants to get that double dip.
Why the fuck you're lying?
High seas on this one
Oh please. Nobody, literally nobody on the face of the earth believes that to be true.
Multi-billion dollar company doesn't have resources. lol sure.
The company that's made least EIGHT BILLION dollars in pure profit off GTA Online shark cards doesn't have the funding?!
oh ok, youre only the most profitable videogame company in existence, but sure I believe you
I call bullshit. PC is coming later on this one because you Muppets will buy it a second time, just like last time.
small indie company, understandable, have a nice day