The Nintendo Switch 2 experts claim that it seems quite unlikely for GTA 6 to launch on the upcoming console. When Rockstar rolled out the epic GTA 6 trailer, it also confirmed that the much-anticipated game is set to launch on Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5, leaving PC players out of the mix. However, since Switch 2 is reportedly set to come out in 2024, many players wonder if the game will launch on the platform.
Unfortunately, the pros at Digital Foundry asked players not to hold their breath in the latest video. Although Nintendo hasn’t announced the specs of Switch 2 yet, Digital Foundry's boss Richard Leadbetter did claim that they've “got a pretty good idea. He said, “This is going to be very, very tricky to pull off.”
Leadbetter then talks about Rockstar’s speckled record on Switch, claiming that the company has been quite picky regarding the games it has ported to the console. For instance, Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption, which was released in 2010, came out 13 years after the game’s launch, and L.A. Noire launched on Switch in 2017, nearly six years after it was initially launched. He said:
“I’d love to say it would happen. I don’t think it will, realistically. It’s a mobile chipset. We’ve seen a lot of amazing things on the Switch 1. Switch 2 is going to be a lot better, a proper generational leap, and forward-looking in many ways. But the stuff they seem to be rolling out for GTA 6 is possibly beyond that.”
Oliver Mackenzie at Digital Foundry also shared her own thoughts by highlighting that one of the major problems with bringing Grand Theft Auto 6 on Switch 2 is that the game’s lighting model might not feature a good non-ray tracing fallback. Mackenzie said, “The Switch 2 is not going to be powerful enough to run all that ray tracing. I just cannot see it.” Moreover, GTA 6 is expected to put high pressure on CPUs with its massive open-world complex systems.
The GTA 6 trailer featured extremely detailed locations full of unique NPCs, and Mackenzie can be seen wincing at just what the players might be able to do in this open-world game. He said, “The level of simulation is quite something else. I don’t think the Switch 2 is going to be capable of that.”
It won’t be out of character for Rockstar Games if the game ends up skipping Switch 2, as Mackenzie notes, since they also didn’t release GTA 5 on the first Switch. “It seems a step beyond,” Leadbetter concludes, “and out of character with what we know about Rockstar’s M.O.” So if Rockstar can choose to skip out on the tonnes of cash that they could have earned from the first Switch, they will most likely not release the next game on Switch 2 either.
Will GTA 6 be on last-gen consoles?
Grand Theft Auto 6 is a highly anticipated game, and when it comes out, everyone in the GTA community will want to get their hands on it and play the game. This also includes players who do their gaming on older generation consoles, namely the PS4 and Xbox One. Unfortunately, after seeing the GTA 6 teaser trailer, we can be sure that the game won’t be coming to last-gen consoles.
This is because, firstly, no consoles are mentioned in the trailer itself. Other than this, the graphical improvements in the game, along with other changes, would simply be too much for the older consoles. So, although it hasn't been officially confirmed yet, we are pretty sure that GTA 6 won’t be coming to last-gen consoles.
