Not longer than a day afterafter the report that Xbox had locked up exclusive streaming rights to Grand Theft Auto VI, Xbox itself has walked most of it back. Chief strategy officer Matthew Ball said on X that GTA 6 will not stream exclusively or to PC and The Verge, which broke the original story, has since corrected their initial report. The exclusive-rights scoop we covered a day earlier is no longer an exciting story that could've potentially set Xbox up as a competitive platform for Grand Theft Auto.
Ball's statement was short and direct:
While the excitement for GTAVI and XBOX is great to see, it has also led to some misreporting. We are looking forward to launching GTAVI on XBOX November 19, though the game will not be streaming exclusively or to PC."
In one fell swoop, Ball took out the two headline claims from the original report, the exclusivity and the idea that PC players could stream the game through Xbox Cloud Gaming without a console.
The Verge updated its article to match. Tom Warren, who reported the scoop, noted that the deal "appears to be more complicated than I originally reported." The corrected version still says a streaming arrangement of some kind exists, letting Xbox Cloud Gaming stream GTA 6 at launch, but no longer calls it exclusive and no longer promises PC access.
It's still unclear what the specifics are at this point, but it's most likely that the delay is for Xbox console streaming only, with the web browsers and apps that usually reach Xbox Cloud Gaming possibly shut out for GTA 6.
The GTA 6 streaming story, before and after
Original report, October 6 | Where it stands now |
|---|---|
Exclusive streaming rights | Not exclusive, per Xbox |
Streamable to PC and phones via cloud | Not to PC |
Only Xbox Cloud Gaming could stream it | Likely Xbox console streaming only |
A cloud way in for PC players with no native version | No cloud path for PC at launch |
This is Xbox's clarification on the record.
Unfortunately, Ball's post denies the big claims but does not spell out what the arrangement actually is and Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive have said nothing at all. So we have an official denial sitting on top of a corrected report, over a deal whose existence and terms remain unverified.
The group with the most to lose here are PC players. The reason the original story went viral was that Rockstar still has not announced a native PC version of GTA 6, so cloud streaming looked like the one way onto a PC at launch. Ball's "not to PC" shuts that door, at least for now. Anyone on PC is back to waiting for a native release Rockstar has not talked about at all, or buying a now-much-more expensive console.
Interestingly, this is the second time in about two weeks Ball has stepped in to correct Warren's GTA 6 reporting. The first was in late September, when Warren cited sources describing GTA 6 pre-orders as heavily skewed toward PS5 and Ball publicly countered that the game was breaking records for Xbox.
None of this makes Warren unreliable but Ball has clearly become Xbox's designated response whenever a GTA 6 report goes the wrong way for the brand.
What is not in dispute is what we already know about the game. GTA 6 still launches on November 19 on Xbox Series S/X and PlayStation 5. Any Xbox cloud streaming, if it is supported at all, would require owning it and would fall under the new monthly hour limits and pay-as-you-go pricing Microsoft is adding to Xbox Cloud Gaming in November.
So if you are deciding whether to get a PS5 or an Xbox for GTA 6, the new streaming deal is a non-factor for now.