Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson told preview press this week that Grand Theft Auto 6 will not sell you things for real money when the story mode launches, and that generative AI is not in the game.
The comments came out of the Edinburgh preview that led into the 27-minute Extended Look. On the Kinda Funny Gamescast, Andy Cortez said he asked whether players can spend real-world cash inside the game. The answer he brought back was "no monetizations in this game." Greg Miller said he asked point blank if AI is in GTA 6. He said the team told him "no AI."
That matches what Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick already said in February. Zelnick told GamesIndustry that generative AI has "zero part in what Rockstar Games is building," and that the worlds are built street by street instead of being generated. The New York Times feature around the same preview week said Rockstar put the animation count at more than 600,000, against 55,000 in Grand Theft Auto V and 300,000 in Red Dead Redemption 2, and that the studio kept stressing the work was human-made.
None of this is a surprise if you have played a Rockstar campaign. GTA V story and Red Dead 2 never sold you a pistol from a cash shop. The money machine has always been GTA Online and Shark Cards. Rockstar still will not talk about the next Online. Kinda Funny asked. They got nothing. So the clean reading is the November 19 disc, digital, or download-for GTA 6 on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S is a buy-once story. Whatever the Online mode becomes later is a different product and a different press cycle.
The $100 Ultimate Edition still exists. Those extra shops and clothes are preorder and edition bonuses delivered inside the map, not a live cash store sitting on the pause menu. IGN and others have already separated that from microtransactions. Keep that split in your head when the comments section starts yelling about Sara’s salon.
They locked the single-player box because that box has always been locked, and because this game is already priced at $80 standard. The fight that actually matters for microtransactions is whether the Online mode shows up six months later with a shark card and a new name.
Are you buying the standard edition or waiting to see if Online is even a launch topic? Let us know in the comments.
About The Author:
GBest
Member Since
9/11/2017
When not busy with school or sports, can usually be found watching anime, reading manga or online fragging people and earning massive XP in an MMORPG with his friends over Team Speak.