The next update to Grand Theft Auto V’s GTA Online will include Freemode Events. The events feature open-world challenges that will randomly pop up while free roaming in Los Santos. You can opt out of them, but then you’d miss the insanity of hunting one player designated a “werewolf,” playing lethal king of the hill, or just arming up and going at it in an all-out turf war. Sounds good, but it’s stuff like this that are keeping single player fans from getting any story-based DLC. In an interview with IGN, Rockstar North revealed that 8 million people play GTA Online each week, and keeping those players happy (and presumably spending money on in-game currency) dominates their development resources.
I bet a lot more than 8 million people bought the game, and I also bet a lot of those 8 million would go back into singleplayer and play that if there was new content. But nope, gotta cater to multiplayer. -sigh-
Yes, it’s a sketchy anonymous post in a GTA fan forum, but whoever this guy is, he’s been right on other posts in his history. He’s only posted three times in the last 3 years, and he was accurate each time.
For example, in this very post, he listed the Biker DLC a full month before the update was announced by Rockstar.
He says the next two GTA Online updates are a “Law and Order” DLC that allows you to join the Blaine County PD, and a “Luxury Living” DLC that will offer mansions.
The juicy parts are:
[quote]
San Fierro and Las Ventures were built alongside Los santos way back in the early development stages of GTAV, Scrapped on PS3/Xbox for obvious reasons!!
After more then 3 years of re building for PS4/XBO/PC,
Both are still being worked on with a release target of October 2018!
Single player DLC has been replaced with Online Map expansion model!
Mainly due to the unforeseen success of micro transactions and GTA online in general![/quote]
[quote]
GTAV Story Mode Updates. For those ready to jump back into the story of Grand Theft Auto V, we have big plans for substantial additions in 2014 continuing Michael, Franklin and Trevor’s action, mayhem and unexpected adventures in Southern San Andreas.[/quote]
Where are you reading this? It says this is the revenue generated by “GTA products”, which certainly includes all GTA games. GTA V has been constantly in the top 10 in all kinds of markets. Not saying that Take Two isn’t earning a buttload of money through GTA Online - they surely are. It’s just not that number.
Nothing new in the GTA product line was released in the 12 months covered in the report. I’m sure there’s a portion of that $700 million coming from people buying GTAV for their Xbox Ones, PS4s, and PCs this past year, but there’s no way the lion’s share isn’t coming from GTA Online considering the past reports that have actually come from court documents.
OK. Whatever the number, it’s significant enough that Rockstar and Take Two have completely scrapped whatever plan they had for SP DLC in 2014 and that’s really what’s important.
It bums me out, but a company is going to follow the money. I would’ve bought pretty much any single player DLC, really enjoyed GTA V but I’ve spent almost no time in the online mode, just not interesting to me. Guess that makes me a dinosaur.
Disappointing, but not surprising. Superdata reported over $500 million for GTA V in 2015, which may be where the number in the lawsuit is coming from. Considering the game’s age, I would expect most of that to come from sales of virtual currency and goods.
Given GTA Online’s success, there’s a good chance of RDR2 following the same model.
“Recurrent consumer spending (including add-on content, microtransactions and online play) increased to 57.0% of net revenue from digital online channels for the three months ended
June 30, 2016”
Digital revenue for that quarter was $172m, some of which came from NBA 2K16 and, at least in theory, Battleborn.
[quote]
Among the key takeaways was that Grand Theft Auto V has sold-in 70 million copies (up from 65 million), while its online mode, GTA Online, continues to grow.[/quote]
[quote]
Revenue from digital sources jumped by 14 percent to $230.8 million, up from $202.4 million. What Take-Two calls recurrent consumer spending (virtual currency, DLC, and online game revenue), accounted for 31 percent of total revenue and 56 percent of digitally delivered revenue. NBA 2K16, GTA V, and GTA Online were called out as leading growth drivers in this area.[/quote]
I’m replaying the story now. It’s I think my fourth time through and just as fun. Though I do miss tons of features that I wish they’d at least add when you beat the game or get close. Vehicle delivery, ambient firefights (the gang territories), helicopter pickups, backup mercenaries, etc. When I play online it’s exclusively missions by myself. Still haven’t tried the heists as you need a full 4 players for all of them, which kinda sucks. All that content is inaccessible to me. Same with the VIP stuff, yachts, and all the other stuff they added. Can’t do any of it. Which is why I play single player a lot.
Would appreciate some support, since they are doing so well online… but I’ve gotten tons of value, so I can’t complain too hard.
I spend more time in the lobby than doing any actual missions.
Join a heist, drive a bus, some guy fails, redo the bus driving, x 5 times, then some guy leaves, and you are back in the lobby waiting for another replacement.
Start a survival match, wait for ages in lobby, start the match and have someone leave during the loading, and another mid mission, and the last guy at the end on wave 10 (final round).
Back to lobby.
At least you can join “on call” while free-roaming. but that is basically lobby as well, no?
Gives you a break from when someone join the server and insta-kill everyone at least.
Yeah, it really is. They won’t change a thing though, because they are not incentivized to. They are raking in WoW money with the Shark cards. It’s pretty amazing.
I only use the online to play missions and do territory attacks. Basically I always play alone. It’s a trade off, you get car delivery, helicopter travel, and a bunch of other improvements playing online. But I miss animals and the voice acting in story mode. But it’s all single player with an occasional random that joins a game lobby once in a while. It’s too hard to coordinate, the matchmaking is totally broken as instant0 described.
