Credit:
Kyle Orland
When it comes to major 3D releases, Rockstar clearly prioritizes console launches over PC ports.
Credit:
Kyle Orland
Time is getting short
The rise of AI-powered reverse-engineering tools—which can quickly turn a console game binary into easy-to-port raw code with incredible brute-force efficiency and minimal human effort—might change that kind of “PC can wait” calculus for Rockstar. “I think I would be concerned, if I was Rockstar, that somebody would just take the PS5 version and get AI to change it to PC,” Vermeij told Rock Paper Shotgun.
To be sure, decompiling a game as complex as Grand Theft Auto VI wouldn’t be as simple as, say, the previous human-led decompilations of early 3D GTA games. But even if an AI coding harness has some difficulty capturing all the details of GTA VI‘s advanced weather systems and scripted sweat simulations, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Vermeij speculated that reverse-engineering the console version of GTA VI could cost “tens of thousands of dollars in tokens,” and a resulting port probably “won’t be as good as [Rockstar’s] effort” in the end. That said, Vermeij said it would probably be good enough to satisfy some potential PC players and that he “wouldn’t be surprised if there was an effort to get [the releases] a little bit closer together” to get ahead of that.
“What was the case before is that there’s so much effort in developing the game, that it is not possible to rip it off, and that’s completely changed now,” Vermeij said. “So, yeah, we’re going to have to see in the next couple of years how that’s going to pan out.”
While there hasn’t been an official timing announcement for the PC port of Grand Theft Auto VI, reports suggest Rockstar is currently aiming for the first quarter of 2027.