UPDATE, October 7: Matthew Ball of Xbox has issued a denial against some of Tom Warren’s claims, although the wording is very careful.
“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,” wrote Ball.
His wording is important: he denies streaming to PC and any sort of exclusive rifghts, but doesn’t actually deny console-based streaming.
Meanwhile, Tom Warren has apologised for claiming GTA 6 would be streamable to PC, saying, “Update: I’ve corrected my story as the Xbox cloud streaming rights deal for GTA 6 appears to be more complicated than I originally reported. Sorry for the confusion!”
He remains adamant, however, that GTA 6 will be streamable on Xbox Cloud Gaming.
This is interesting because it would Currently, you can freely stream eligible games from your Xbox library, and that includes streaming to PC. If Warren’s claims that it will be available on Xbox Cloud Gaming is true alongside Ball’s denial, that means GTA 6 would be the only game on the service that doesn’t allow streaming to PC, as best as I can tell. Xbox would have to modify the system so that the server won’t allow a session request from anything that isn’t an Xbox console.
Having GTA 6 available on Xbox Cloud Gaming would still be a win for Xbox, but not as exciting as the initial claim made it. Being able to stream the game to PC would of opened up a huge potential market of people who don’t own a console.
Or is this all BS and Ball’s poorly worded reply is actually a denial of all streaming? Guess we will find out in time.
ORIGINAL STORY: Xbox has reportedly managed to pick up a sizable win by signing a deal with Rockstar and Take-Two that gives Xbox exclusive streaming rights to GTA 6.
Tom Warren of The Verge is making the claim, writing that Asha Sharma delivered the news in an all-hands meeting this morning. Presumably, this is the same meeting Jez Corden reported on, although interestingly it was never mentioned in the Windows Central article. It could of been two seperate meetings, or perhaps one of the reports is wrong. So take all this with some salt.
According to what Tom Warren sources told him, Asha Sharma informed staff that Xbox would do something “no other platform holder is doing”. Sources tell Warren the deal gives Xbox exclusive game streaming rights to GTA 6.
Warren says the deal means only Xbox Cloud Streaming can stream GTA 6, although the specifics are unknown. His article also notes that since there’s no PC version of GTA 6 announced, this means PC players could enjoy the game via streaming without needing to own a console.
You would need to own the game itself, presumably, unless Xbox’s deal is even crazier than it sounds.
The news comes just after Xbox announced a radical overhaul to its streaming service. Now, everyone has a limit to how many hours of streaming they can enjoy per month, based on their Game Pass subscription level. Ultimate members get 15 hours, for example. If you want to stream more, you can choose to pay for extra hours.
Next month, Xbox will also open the doors to streaming without a Game Pass subscription, basically letting anyone buy streaming hours, just in time for GTA 6.
