Believe it or not, Rockstar Games always planned to bring Grand Theft Auto 5 to PC. According to Rockstar North director of technology Phil Hooker, director of engineering Klaas Schilstra and technical director Adam Fowler in a talk with PC Gamer, the decision was made “day one” for the same.
“We were always going to bring GTA 5 to PC. We planned from day one for a PC build and we made technical decisions based off the fact that we would be doing a PC version of the game.
“While we started development of the PC version quite early, we decided to focus the bulk of our attention on the PS3 and XB360 versions first in order to push that as far as we possibly could before turning our attention to the PS4 and Xbox One versions.
“And then using the shared architecture underpinning the new consoles to help ourselves ramp up into the PC version and push the game as far as we possibly could, knowing we would have the opportunity to make the game look and feel better than it ever has.”
Rockstar Toronto president Kevin Hoare also said that the company’s method of creating ports is different now, as it keeps the platform in mind when creating new versions. Interestingly enough, focusing on a PC build actually helped when developing for the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Grand Theft Auto 5.
“We knew that we would eventually create a PC version so early development was done in parallel with the console versions. In fact, some of the early preparations we made for PC, like 64 bit & DX11 support, paid off very handsomely when the PS4 and Xbox One architectures were announced.
“That early work made the process of transitioning to the new consoles a lot easier and allowed us to hit the ground running. The artists also prepared for PC by authoring their source art at PC-ready resolutions, even though we had to use massively reduced versions for the PS3 and XB360.”
It’s made for some fairly great looking visuals in the PC version, even if you need more powerful hardware than normal to run it. Grand Theft Auto 5 on PC will be available tomorrow worldwide.