Grand Theft Auto 5,along with its wildly popular multiplayer modeGrand Theft Auto Online, has redefined the expectations of longevity and consistent relevancy within the video game sphere. The game has now seen individual releases across three generations of consoles, typifying the unheard of demand that the title still retains to this day.
WithGrand Theft Auto Onlinerecently being given its own standalone release for current generation consoles, along withGrand Theft Auto 5, many improvements were introduced in the form of fidelity enhancements and fresh in-game content. However, it is difficult to see the lack of a crossplay option within the new release ofGrand Theft Auto Onlineas anything other than a glaring omission.
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The Success of Grand Theft Auto Online
Releasing originally for the PS3 and Xbox 360 in September 2013,Grand Theft Auto 5redefined what fans could expect from theGTAfranchise. The intricate detail and groundbreaking scale present within the game helpedGrand Theft Auto 5become the best-selling title of all time in 2017, although this title has since been taken by the equally definingMinecraft.
An additional and possibly unintended level of success, however, was also present within the game’s online mode. Simply namedGrand Theft Auto Online, multiplayer has grown to rival various other highly popular games within the multiplayer gaming sphere. Bringing in annual profits of hundreds of millions of dollars via microtransactions every year,the community-driven success ofGTA Onlinehas understandably thrust the game to the relative forefront of Rockstar’s focus.
This success is undoubtedly the main source of inspiration for Rockstar recently releasing thestandalone version ofGrand Theft Auto Onlinefor the current generation of consoles. With just how popular the game is across both PlayStation and Xbox, as well as PC, this standalone re-release would have provided the perfect opportunity to implement crossplay capabilities forGrand Theft Auto Online.
The Success of Crossplay Within Contemporary Gaming
The modern tendency for crossplay support within bigger online titles is a technical marvel that has proven to be very successful. What was once considered an optimistic pipe-dream is slowly becoming an industry standard, much to the applause of fans across different platforms. The ability for players to unite and play with, or against, each other across a variety of the most popular consoles opens up the possibilities, and more importantly the demographics, for games in an unprecedented manner.
Players need only to look toCall of Duty’sdominating take on the Battle Royale formula,Warzone, to conceptualize the beneficial effects of crossplay capability. The successful online competitive shooter saw over60 million concurrent players playingWarzonewithin just two months of its initial release in March 2020. While this skyrocketing figure was aided by the near-global lockdowns due to Coronavirus, it remains that the inclusion of crossplay massively aided the sense of communal competition and the wider demographic pool which saw the game become so successful.
DespiteWarzone and Grand Theft Auto Onlinediffering in core gameplay and genre, they are both equal in the prestige and wide-spanning communities that they possess within the gaming discourse. It would make sense that the same crossplay-derived joys experienced byWarzonewould easily translate toGrand Theft Auto Onlinein the same capacity, with the opportunities crossplay could provide being endless.
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What Crossplay Could Introduce to Grand Theft Auto Online
Despite the concept of “console wars” being a now relatively archaic concept, the element of tribalism and (mostly) friendly banter between PlayStation and Xbox players is still a factor worthy of consideration when examining crossplay. Putting these two groups of players within the chaotic sandbox thatGrand Theft Auto Onlinehas been known for would have only increased the buzz and organic development of the game’s popularity. Players only have to look back to theinfamous alien war ofGrand Theft Auto Onlineto note that the playerbase doesn’t need an excuse to take sides against each other.
Outside the sandbox and freedom of the game’s overworld, themissions and linear gamemodes ofGrand Theft Auto Onlinewould have been a perfect environment to introduce crossplay. Crossplay functionality could have seen the implementation of PlayStation vs Xbox missions, in which two different teams from each respective console compete against each other in races, and even deathmatch modes.
This formula could have even been applied to theheists of Grand Theft Auto Online, fostering an environment where opposing crews representing each console could compete directly against each other for the attractive loot that heists involve. With the competitive nature ofGrand Theft Auto Online, the element of tribalism that opposing console playerbases would bring would definitely be a main selling point of crossplay capability.
Potential PC Crossplay for Grand Theft Auto Online
The hypotheticals ofGrand Theft Auto Onlineshould not be limited to just consoles. In recent times,Grand Theft Auto Onlinehas sheen a sharp rise in popularity on its PC port, primarily through the intense online popularity ofrole-playing servers withinGTA Onlinelike NoPixel. Although potentially logistically difficult, the advent ofGrand Theft Auto Onlinefor the current generation of more high-powered consoles could have seen crossplay between console and PC as an additional benefit.
The accessibility forGrand Theft Auto Onlinemods, and the introduction of the popular role-play system to console players, would only serve to compound the longevity of the titleeven further. With how longGrand Theft Auto 5and its multiplayer has been at the forefront of gaming, the implementation of crossplay may yet be introduced somewhere down the line.
Grand Theft Auto Onlineis available now for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
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