PC Gamer talks to Rockstar North about GTA V PC with some Q&A

[cragger89]

People moan that ports are released too early and run poorly due to no optimisation.

 

People moan that ports take too long to be released.

 

WTF? They're releasing a finished product which works. So long as that is the actual case, who gives a shit if it took 2 years?

[Sauron]

As someone who owns both a 4k monitor and a 4kTV, and play games on both, I can assure you not all games are 4k compatible, sometimes to comical effect. Eg, I recently downloaded Rainbow Six Vegas after realising how much I messed that game. At 4k, the level intro cutscenes play in the centre quarter of the screen, while outside the cutscenes you can see all the characters stood still waiting like actors waiting to be told 'action'. As mentioned UI scaling can make a high difference too, especially at 42" on a TV. Again textures can look awful. And most importantly is optimisation running at such high resolution is hard on a system. Being programmed to spread the load properly is very important.

 

I play at 4k too, I just haven't come across a AAA game (especially the modern ones) that didn't work just fine... the only thing I have noticed in some games is UI scaling, which sometimes is very small or very stretched. Still, it should be a given for something like gta V, coming out in 2015 and with the highest budget ever spent on a videogame, not a mind blowing "feature". Textures aren't really a huge point, those should be as high resolution as possible even at 1080p. In fact I'm disappointed that we haven't gotten to a point where it is possible to use up 6gb+ of vram without pointless anti-aliasing even at 1080p, give us the option. Textures make perhaps the biggest difference in visual quality after resolution.

[Sauron]

People moan that ports are released too early and run poorly due to no optimisation.

 

People moan that ports take too long to be released.

 

WTF? They're releasing a finished product which works. So long as that is the actual case, who gives a shit if it took 2 years?

 

It's just a bit off-putting when they had the highest budget ever given to a videogame, record sales since the beginning, and it's glaringly obvious that they are milking the console crowd as hard as possible before releasing to pc. It's frustrating for the loyal fans of the franchise who see rockstar turning their back on them for the sake of even more profit on top of the multiple billions they already made.

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

"We were always going to bring GTA V to PC from day 1."

 

Go and get fucked.

 

I think it was true, they just let people bought them on consoles before so they can make more money.

[Humbug]

So 4k for a 7870 or GTX 760? Even at 30 fps, that seems impossible.

He didn't say at max or even high settings. So he prob meant 4k but at a much less demanding medium preset.

[Admire]

/thread

 

But no really, they can.  On these very forums I rightfully predicted Rockstar's business moves in advance, because they are perfectly logical.  They worked on the PS3/X360 first, that is their primary market.  Then they gave it some time before releasing for PS4/X1, another good move.  Launching GTAV a month after the next-gen consoles released would have most likely stunted sales, versus waiting until well after the holidays etc. as the ownership numbers increased dramatically.  There are probably development factors to take into account too, teams working on patches, GTA Online, Online Heists, etc.  Next-gen market is the secondary market.  Then, at last, the tertiary market, however much that pains your eyes to read it, PC.  It originally was slated to come out only a few months after the next-gen launch, this no doubt due to the fact that launching an optimized game for the fragmentary hardware market that is PC is much more difficult than for one type of hardware that are consoles.

 

Then, after the horrific two years we've had in the AAA market of unacceptable games being shoved out long before they're ready, Rockstar alongside many other developers in 2015 (Rocksteady with Arkham Knight, CDPR with Witcher 3, Obsidian with Pillars, Nintendo with Zelda) made the shrewd choice of delaying the PC release a few months more.  Not only are they not alone in this kind of decision, they are probably making the right one, especially with the reputation their previous GTA PC title has.

 

Of course, the game might still be terribly optimized, I guess we'll find out in less than 100 hours!  I expect thousands of PC gamers are busy spending their weekend sharpening pitchforks, rolling new torches, and polishing for caps lock keys for optimum cruise control coolness come Tuesday.

 

Exactly. I think its quite understandable. Working on everything at the same time would require far more staff on an already expensive game.