The remastered, next-gen versions of Rockstar Games’ nearly eight-year-old (but still incredibly popular) open-world action-adventure title, Grand Theft Auto V, will not be your average ports. The claim stems from an article published by Video Games Chronicle, which echoed statements that Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick made today during Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media, & Telecom Conference. Zelnick touched upon the upcoming GTAV remasters and provided some suggestions as to how they should be approached, revealing that they shouldn’t be “simple ports,” among other nuggets of wisdom.
“We’ve done great with the Mafia series, for example, and Grand Theft Auto [V] is now heading into its third generation which is incredible,” Zelnick explained. “It was a standard-bearer when it was launched, it continued to be the standard-bearer in the second generation, we’ll see how Grand Theft Auto does in the next generation. Obviously, I’m confident that Rockstar is going to deliver just a great experience, but you can’t do that if you’re just doing a simple port.”
“I’m not sure there’ll be a bigger part of the strategy,” he added in regard to whether remastered versions of older titles would become more routine for the company. “Remastering has always been a part of the strategy. We’ve done differently than the competition – we don’t just port titles over, we actually take the time to do the very best job we can making the title different for the new release, for the new technology that we’re launching it on.”
“So, we improve the technology, we upgrade the visuals, and we make performance enhancements. And that’s why I think our remastered titles typically do so well.”
Video Games Chronicles reported that the remastered version of Grand Theft Auto V will arrive on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles in the second half of 2021. It isn’t clear what kind of exact enhancements Rockstar Games is planning for the remastered version of its open-world hit, but the countless visual mods that have been developed for the PC version since its April 14, 2015 release should provide a good indication of what GTA fans with next-gen consoles might be in for.
“The new generation versions of GTAV will feature a range of technical improvements, visual upgrades and performance enhancements to take full advantage of the latest hardware, making the game more beautiful and more responsive than ever,” Rockstar Games wrote in its original announcement confirming that Grand Theft Auto V would be coming to new-generation consoles in 2021.