A look at GTA 6 and Xbox's disc-to-digital solution: August 26-September 1 news

Hey readers,

Happy September! As I’ve probably mentioned in this newsletter before, September is looking pretty packed when it comes to video game releases. Personally, I’m looking forward to Orbitals, Marvel’s Wolverine, and Control Resonant.

But besides that are The Blood of Dawnwalker, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, Silent Hill: Townfall, Minecraft Dungeons 2, and probably others I’m forgetting. Oh, also, Garfield: Escape from Monday—the biggest one of these games, I’d say.

Let’s get into the news.

Xbox is letting users try out a new feature for consoles that makes a lot of sense for the all-digital future that the games industry appears to be barreling toward. The disc-to-digital program lets you redeem a digital copy for (select) Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S games if you have the disc. Just pop the disc into your Xbox and redeem the digital copy. There are caveats, of course.

As mentioned, only certain games are supported; many Xbox games after a certain year have unique identifiers on the disc, so only those games will let you claim the digital entitlement. That completely rules out all original Xbox or Xbox 360 games—at least for now. If you give your disc away after claiming the digital license, and that person redeems it for themselves, you’ll lose the digital copy.

There’s a user-made database of Xbox games that support the feature that you can check out. A very cool discovery that players have already made is that the program even supports some games that have since been delisted from the Xbox Store—as long as you have the disc, you can still get the digital license. Again, with those caveats.

We don’t know for sure that the next Xbox (codenamed Project Helix) will have a disc drive. When asked, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma gave a non-answer, simply saying that the Xbox team realizes that consumers value physical media.

"I know players love physical media, and I know there's a lot of benefits in digital media, and I want to make sure people have a choice. There are stacks of games on everybody's shelves,” Sharma said.

Your guess is as good as mine. There have been no rumors or reports suggesting that PlayStation would do any sort of disc-to-digital program. Since Sony is abandoning physical games starting in 2028, coming up with a similar solution would possibly bring them some consumer goodwill, but don’t place any bets on it happening.

Forget those stupid leaks: Rockstar Games showed off about 26 minutes of in-game footage of Grand Theft Auto 6 in an “extended look.” The video debuted on Netflix, but it’s also on YouTube. I’d recommend watching it directly on Rockstar’s website to avoid YouTube’s video compression.

To summarize, it was a visually impressive display, showcasing cutscenes, gunplay, and several activities that you can do as the main characters of Jason and Lucia. It definitely looks like a Grand Theft Auto game, but with a lot more detail. Technical experts were certainly impressed, with a level of density and character rendering better than most games that you’d see from this generation of game consoles.

Despite the weird rollout as a Netflix exclusive, the video seemed to perform well for the streamer. Netflix had some technical issues when the video launched, but it was the service’s most-watched title last week. Hilariously, it even has a Letterboxd entry, so people on the platform have been reviewing the GTA 6 video as if it were a movie.

We saw what are assumed to be standard GTA story missions, but gameplay moments implied that actions and choices would affect Jason and Lucia’s relationship (romance between the two is optional, interestingly enough). The map also looks enormous, so there’s plenty of Vice City to drive around in and explore.

The Wanted system also goes up to six stars, as it did in older GTA games, and there’s a more complex “criminal profile” system that’s almost Red Dead-like. Interviews with various outlets confirmed other details, such as the game’s average story length of 80 hours, the implementation of a physical fitness/health system, and a lot of other tidbits.

However, some fans, whether they enjoyed the showcase or not, seem to believe that the user interface is bland and leaves a lot to be desired.

Unsurprisingly, there was nary a mention of any online features. The ever-popular GTA Online launched for GTA 5 a month after the base game’s release, so it’s safe to guess that some sort of GTA Online follow-up for GTA 6 would also come out post-release.

If it’s any indication, Rockstar is supporting a major group in the GTA Online roleplaying scene—nopixel. Rockstar is launching a closed beta for nopixel 5, an official GTA roleplaying server, next week. Some are interpreting the news as a GTA Online sequel being far off, but I suppose anything’s possible.

That’s it for this week. Hopefully, I’ll be playing some Orbitals this weekend.

Roger roger,
Chris Compendio