It is generally accepted fandom knowledge that the GTA Online audience overwhelmingly play on consoles. Getting exact platform distributed sales figures is impossible, but to get a rough temperature various analytics sites estimate between 27 and 40 million Steam users own GTA 5. Naturally, Steam isn't the only way to own the game on PC, but this metric does help us see from where the wind is blowing.
As of May 2024, the official lifetime sales numbers of GTA 5 have crossed 200 Million units. Now, If we take 40 million Steam users, plus other storefronts, then suddenly PC doesn't seem like such a minor player after all, when you consider that the remaining rough ~150 Million units are spread out across six different consoles — and just two of those are getting preferential treatment.
Even if we stick to the lowball metric of roughly 27 million Steam owners, adding all hypothetical Epic Games Store owners, boxed copy owners and Rockstar launcher owners makes the PC a sizeable chunk of the overall playerbase.
Simplifying it down to "PC vs Consoles" there certainly is a huge disparity, but that could also be explained with the 18 month lead time Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 had over the PC port — and just the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 get access to exclusive features.
We theorize therein lies the answer — this isn't about market share at all. GTA 5 has been launched and sold in a slightly new edition coming up on four times now, and analytics seem to indicate a lot of players double or triple dipped, re-buying the game on new platforms repeatedly. By the time we got to the PS5 and Series X|S, customers needed some kind of incentive to buy a game from 2013.
The PC is perfectly capable to ray-trace GTA Online and play along smoothly with animals running around, but marketing these as next-gen exclusive features probably helped sell the game, again, on the latest platforms. If this scenario is accurate, it means there are chances Rockstar will simply patch these features into the PC port later on once the marketing angle is exhausted, if this ever happens.
We've got to admit, though, that there is one wound in this theory: GTA+.
In an industry where profits drive everything, it is an absolutely baffling decision not to make this subscription service available on PC where it would basically be "free money" for Rockstar and Take-Two. Is anyone buying GTA 5 specifically on current gen consoles just because of GTA+? We'd be shocked. But we're certain many PC players would subscribe given the chance.
Rockstar Games' strategy regarding GTA 5, and their modern games in general, on PC seems odd at best, and many fans would describe it less charitably. It doesn't seem to make the most financial sense, and we can only hope that things will fare better in the GTA 6 era. In the meantime however, it seems that Career Progress, ray-tracing and animals will remain a privilege of console players.
