After years of a seemingly endless hype train, Cyberpunk 2077 is finally playable worldwide. CD Projekt Red’s new open-world, story-driven RPG has constantly drawn GTA comparisons, and fans looking forward to GTA 6 think there are valuable lessons for Rockstar.
Expectations were sky-high for Cyberpunk, possibly to its detriment. Some of it can be blamed on marketing, some can be blamed on excited fans just getting their hopes far too high for what the game might be.
Despite hitting the mark in some places, the game is notoriously buggy – particularly on the console versions, which seem incapable of delivering the graphical quality PC players can enjoy.
So what does this mean for the next installment of GTA? There’s more than one thing that Rockstar can take away from Cyberpunk’s launch, but one thing stands out.
Cyberpunk vs GTA6: Setting expectations
Cyberpunk 2077 was first teased all the way back in 2012. Eight years and multiple delays later, the game is finally here – but despite the slogan ‘coming when it’s ready’, many argue it wasn’t.
“This is why I think Rockstar is keeping quiet on even announcing GTA 6, To avoid a GTA IV situation again,” one fan looking forward to the next GTA said. “If they don’t say anything nothing is promised, so if the game was meant to come out next year but it wasn’t in a good state, they could just delay it by a year and no one’s the wiser.”
GTA 6 on old-gen consoles?
It’s also of note that ‘old gen’ consoles are suffering the most with Cyberpunk’s performance issues. GTA V was released first on the previous-gen (Xbox 360 & PS3), before coming to the next-gen PS4 and Xbox One consoles.
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However, with GTA 6 still not even announced, it’s possible that Rockstar will forego a PS4 and Xbox One release, and just put their next GTA on current-gen consoles only – potentially avoiding the embarrassing performance plaguing Cyberpunk.
“Cyberpunk should have never come to old gen. I know the possible sales yada yada. But what did they expect…” another fan wrote on the GTA 6 subreddit.
Reddit user PrimG84 (via GameRant) said that the release of Cyberpunk 2077 is “why a developer should not reveal a game eight years before its release,” and rather keep working in silence until they’re ready to announce.
At the time of writing, absolutely nothing official has been confirmed about the next GTA game – for all we know it doesn’t exist at all. Presumably, Rockstar have been working on a new entry in the series for some time, but all we have to go on currently are rumors and fan theories.
Players recently highlighted this hint in the latest GTA Online expansion trailer as a sign of GTA VI.