And yes, there will be plenty who say this decision is about nothing more than Rockstar’s push for the double-dip two years after the big console launch. There will no doubt be a number of counter arguments in response to York’s video, chief among them the vast resources available to Rockstar compared to many other developers who build and release PC ports of their complex open world games. So let’s put all our energy into the PlayStation, and then the Xbox, and then the PC.” So we prioritise what’s best for the company’s money, right? What’s going to sell best? Well, most likely it’s the PlayStation. We don’t have the money, we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the manpower. If they had a huge team, if they had just one team working on the PC, one team working on the Xbox, and the whole time they’d be trying to optimise all three at the same time, but it just doesn’t work that way. “It’s hard to do that as a developer because the team isn’t big enough. “A lot of times people are so antsy for the PC port, they want it right now,” York continued. “If it was tested more against different configurations it would have made it out okay and unscathed,” York insisted. York pointed to the backlash against the 2015 PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight as a warning sign for what can happen if a PC version of a complex game isn’t given enough time in the oven. It’s only been tested by a thousand people at work. And there’s a lot of things that can go wrong once you release that PC port, because it just hasn’t been tested by millions of people.
There’s so many different configurations out there that you’ll just never be able to test them all. And when you’re doing the PC port you have to test things on multiple different hardwares, different GPUs. If you think about it, you already have to test the game a ton in order to get it to work. “They need to test the game more on PC than they would on Xbox or PlayStation. It’s hard to explain, but that’s what it boils down to. The memory usage and the different things the game is doing in the background can sometimes hit a fail and mess up during different configurations. But when it comes to a PC, every single person has a different PC. Because on a PlayStation and an Xbox, each one of those has one graphics card, and it’s the same graphics card, it’s the same architecture inside the box as every single PlayStation that’s shipped to millions of people. “They have to accommodate for all these different things that can happen. “This is very important for everybody to remember: one of the main reasons why a PC port will take so long is because it’s different architecture and different components,” York said. This is very important for everybody to remember: one of the main reasons why a PC port will take so long is because it's different architecture and different components. This, York said, is the main reason Rockstar releases PC versions of its games after the console versions, and why GTA 6 is set to follow the pattern. Then we get to the meat of York’s argument: the nature of building a PC version of a game as complicated and vast as GTA for a huge number of potential hardware configurations, and the sheer amount of testing that has to be done to ensure a quality launch. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S versions also launched March 2022. GTA 5 launched on PS3 and Xbox 360 in September 2013 before launching on PS4 and Xbox One in November 2014, and it didn’t launch on PC until April 2015. York said that for GTA 5, Rockstar prioritised the PS3, and built the Xbox 360 port simultaneously, before getting to the PC version post-launch. It sold more than any other console for the most part. “Most of the time, especially in the past, PlayStation was the big seller.
“The reason why a PC port comes later and not the first thing that comes out, is because they want to prioritise what sells,” York said. York, who IGN has already reported on for his reaction to the GTA 6 trailer, begins by explaining why the PlayStation is, historically for Rockstar, the console of focus when it comes to its games. (It’s worth noting that IGN has asked Rockstar about the lack of a PC version for the 2025 launch of GTA 6, but it hasn’t responded.) But speaking in a new video, Mike York, who worked as an animator at Rockstar New England for six years, helping to build GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 before leaving the company in 2017, moved to explain the potential thinking behind Rockstar’s decision. As you’d expect, PC gamers reacted with a mix of downbeat acceptance and shock at Rockstar’s plans to skip PC for GTA 6’s launch in this day and age.