This isn’t supposed to be news; however, IGN – a popular mainstream gaming source – made it that when they uploaded a video to their website and their YouTube channel yesterday with the title “GTA 5 Coming to Wii U”. In the portion of the clip (embedded above), they claimed Nintendo’s President said that “there’s a good chance” GTAV will make its way to the company’s recently launched console.
In the video, they link to an IGN article as their source, which itself links to this interview with MTV. You can have a read through the original quote below, where there is absolutely no talk of how “there’s a good chance” GTAV will be heading to Wii U.
The folks [Rockstar] there have said very nice public comments about the Wii U. In the end, it is Nintendo’s responsibility to have a large installed base, to have development tools that help the developers and publishers create great content, and essentially create an environment where teams like Rockstar can bring their very best content to our platform, and if we do that hopefully the very best content throughout the entire industry will show up on Wii U.
– Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo’s President of America
So again, not entirely sure how IGN turned that into a video news story with the title “GTA 5 Coming to Wii U” where they entirely twisted the words of Nintendo’s President to make it seem like he said something entirely different.
This is definitely not us trying to throw hate their way. Just that, many people put a lot of trust into what their editors say, like when they said last year Tommy Vercetti is GTAV’s main character (even though he would be in his 60s, now) and that Ray Liotta is voicing the character in the first trailer. Being a popular fan site for the game, we’re just trying to set the record straight here.
GTAV and PC version
In what’s going to be a VERY ironic twist, I wanted to go back and address a question on multiple platforms (including PC) from IGN’s interview with Dan Houser last week.
IGN: GTA V is only confirmed for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Why not the PC, Wii U and so on?
Dan Houser: Everything else is up for consideration. That’s all I can give you. The main thing is we are not… we are a third-party publisher. We’re not Nintendo, we’re not Sony, we’re not Microsoft. We love all of them in different ways. But we can do what we want wherever there’s the appropriate business opportunity and chance to find a market. If that’s on Apple we put something on Apple. Wherever it might be. I think that’s the fun in what we do. We see ourselves as a content company that uses technology. We don’t make it; we use it to make the most fun stuff.
The reason I wanted to address that is because it received a lot of attention from PC fans where they took Dan’s answer as a negative sign towards the possibility of a PC version. I just wanted to say, read the question again. It wasn’t directly related to PC but, instead, the “PC, Wii U and so on”. I am confident that had IGN just asked about the PC version alone, the answer would have been different.
I recently had the opportunity to get in touch with another publication that went to preview the game. When they asked Rockstar about a PC version, which you’d expect they would, Rockstar didn’t have an answer for them.
It makes sense really that Rockstar didn’t announce a PC version just yet. Just that, it seems like it won’t release on the same day as the console versions next Spring. Let’s say they even do plan on releasing a PC version 1-3 months after console release, it would have been difficult announcing a release date as they currently don’t have a specific target date yet for the console versions even, other than “Spring 2013” – meaning, somewhere between April-Jun of 2013.
And yes, the back-end of March forms a part of Spring; however, parent company Take-Two specifically said that the game is releasing during the company’s next financial year, which starts on April 1st.