Grand Theft Auto VI reveal

Ten (!) years after GTA V, we finally have the first trailer for GTA VI.

My initial thoughts:

• We already seemed to know a fair bit about the setting, etc from the leaks a while back, but it's good to see it all confirmed. Looking forward to seeing Vice City for the first time in a mainline game in over 20 years.
• First female protagonist for GTA.
• Graphically it looks impressive:
  • Crowd density and NPCs look great - the hair quality and physics is a big step up too.
  • Natural environments and animals look to be picking up where RDR2 left off
  • Animation work
  • Classic GTA style
  • Ocean drive is important to get right, and it looks like they did.
  • The everglades could be a really interesting region for a GTA game.
• 2025 release. We don't know if that's early 2025, middle or later. I think it's best to be pessimistic and assume mid-to-late 2025.
  • Given it has been a decade since GTA V, many hoped Rockstar had gotten it closer to launch-ready before the reveal this time, but it doesn't seem so.
  • This'll almost definitely be current gen consoles only (PS5 - Xbox Series X/S).
  • PC version by 2027? 😭
    • Who knows, maybe they'll surprise us with a simultaneous release this time. I doubt it though. I'll just have to buy the PS5 version and then the PC version again later on.
    • Update: It's PS5 & Xbox only at launch - no mention of PC as usual.
      • Looks like I'm buying it twice!
• The premise of the main characters seems a bit different than usual, that's good.
• Big focus on social media in the trailer, leaning into the whole 'Florida man' meme.

The trailer released early than scheduled due to the trailer being leaked by some crypto account that splashed a 'Buy $BTC' logo over it and posted it on twitter - it was low resolution with an ugly watermark. Roughly 30-35 minutes later, Rockstar decided to take the sting out of the leaks and just release it on their official channel 15 hours ahead of their initial scheduled release.

I'm excited. There's really nothing like Grand Theft Auto hype, they were by far the biggest things around when I was younger - the launches for Vice City and San Andreas in particular were huge when I was a kid. The scale of success has grown massively since then, with GTA V hitting 190 million sales across its many releases:

• PlayStation 3
• Xbox 360
• PlayStation 4
• Xbox One
• PC
• PlayStation 5
• Xbox Series X/S

Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar's last big game, still remains one of the biggest achievements in the industry - if they can rise to that in a new generation of hardware and in that GTA setting - then I think this could be pretty special.