There are a lot of things we don't know about GTA 6, but arguably the biggest is what the heck the next generation of GTA Online is going to look like. Given how much money the online mode attached to GTA 5 makes, a follow-up seems inevitable. But how is Rockstar going to convince players who've spent over a decade investing time and money in the current GTA Online to move on to an all-new game?
You can count Chet Faliszek, a 12-year Valve veteran who wrote for the likes of Portal, Left 4 Dead, and the Half-Life 2 episodes, as among those trying to wrap their heads around the possibilities. "Are they just going to kill Grand Theft Auto 5?" he asks in a new YouTube short. "Is it just going to be one continuous thing that they move over and you get upgrades? Can you play it with either game? That would be crazy."
Technically, we don't even know for sure that GTA 6 Online will exist at all. Online features similar to those built alongside GTA 5 were outed as part of Rockstar's ongoing union dispute, but even if they were in development, there's no guarantee that they'll make it into the final game. Still, with the GTA 6 budget speculated to be in the billions, it's hard to imagine Rockstar or Take-Two turning their nose up at next-gen GTA Online bucks.
"What are they going to do?" Faliszek continues. "That's a mess. We can all look through recent history, without pointing fingers, and see some people who did it by just total replacements. We can see people who tried to win people over and when that didn't happen, shut down the other thing. It's really hard to move people off, because I think people don't understand. At this point, someone's bought Grand Theft Auto 5 for, like, 50 cents, and they're playing it online for free. And that's their world. What is Grand Theft Auto 6 going to bring us online that Grand Theft Auto 5 doesn't have?"
With a knowing look, Faliszek acknowledges the big thing GTA 6 Online might have. "We all know: better monetization, right?" he says. "That's going to be their big innovation. They're going to have to figure out how to get you over to better monetization. You're in charge of Rockstar. How do you move people over to Grand Theft Auto 6 Online? Cuz you're making billions in Grand Theft Auto 5 Online, so you want to make even more billions on 6. How do you do it?"
One thing that's at least close to certain about GTA 6 Online: it won't be there at launch. Rockstar hasn't offered a single official word about an online mode even now, with single-digit days remaining until GTA 6's launch. And the studio already set a precedent with GTA 5, where its online features were turned on weeks after the release date. We might have an even longer wait for GTA 6 Online, but either way, Faliszek thinks a delayed rollout is a smart move for Rockstar.
"I think this is why they're waiting to do it until after launch," he says. "They're just saying 'oh, no, we're doing single-player at first at launch.' Cuz they don't want that negativity around whatever they're going to do at launch. They just want you to buy the game and get in the ecosystem and then they'll figure it out. I think that's a smart move by them. They're just saying 'we know we're going to anger people no matter what we do. And we're thinking about really angering people. So, let's not do that yet.'"
