Next-Game-Gen Grand Theft Auto V

The improved version of Grand Theft Auto V for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One will be out on November 18 and for PC version will follow on January 27, 2015 according to Rockstar. The company alleges the new version of the massively popular game will incorporate new weapons, vehicles, activities, wildlife, and other technological advancements. Rockstar is promising at least 100 new radio songs. Rockstar is also bumping up the GTA Online player limit to 30 for PS4/Xbox One player, they pronounce, though there's still no news on when they'll be adding the much-requested heist system. There's also no word on if or when we'll ever consider some form of single-player downloadable content for Rockstar's ambitious open-world game.

GTA V launched last September for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The longest single-player game, let gamers switch between controlling the lives of three men—the semi-retired bank robber Michael, the aspiring crook Franklin and the psycho Trevor—as they teamed up to rob banks in a fictionalized version of Los Angeles and nearby deserts, forests and beaches. As well as the game looked on the outgoing generation of consoles, a safer-looking variant of the game that would be designed for the new PlayStation and Xbox as well as the PCs was long awaited. That edition was declared this past June at the E3 gaming trade show.

At E3, Rockstar showed a preview for the new edition. Only the company didn't offer a good deal of detail about what precisely would be dissimilar. A press release at the time promised "increased draw distances, finer texture details, denser traffic, and enhanced resolutions" as well as "new wildlife, upgraded weather and damage effects, and an array of new details to discover." GTA V sported a multiplayer mode that was issued a few weeks after the base game. Called Grand Theft Auto Online, it lets players get together or compete in criminal activities sprinkled across the GTA V map, though many players used that version of the game for more peaceful things like creating bike-stunt videos and landing helicopters on top of airborne jets—really, whatever they could think of in the GTA's playground of vehicles, guns and forgiving physics. Rockstar had previously said that player progress in the Xbox 360 or PS3 versions of GTA Online would carry over into the new versions, presumably through the development studio's online Rockstar Social Club system.

Rockstar has supported GTA Online in the year since its launch with regular releases of free packs of missions, weapons, vehicles and outfits while also charging for some desirable items. The company had missed a self-imposed spring deadline for the supposed crown jewel of GTA Online, multiplayer heists. Most recently, Rockstar apologized to fans, saying heists were missing spring but were even doing. Last December the company also teased what sounded like a significant enlargement to the game's single-player campaign for some time this year: "we have great programs for substantial additions in 2014 continuing Michael, Franklin and Trevor's action, mayhem and unexpected adventures in Southern San Andreas."