Why people are still buying GTA 5

It’s sort of ridiculous when you think about it. Grand Theft Auto 5 is almost 10 years old, and now dominating its third generation of consoles – a dynasty with no children. Sure, there are comparably successful games: League of Legends, for instance, has lasted my entire decade in games journalism without beginning to fade away. But GTA 5 wasn’t a live service. Not when it launched; not really. In 2013, GTA Online was what you played if you wanted to have a really shit day in Los Santos, punctuated by repetitive missions and lost data. It took long years to get into shape, like Michael De Santa huffing and puffing through his yoga class. If the online mode that has become Rockstar’s cash cow had been GTA 5’s only offering at launch, it would have gone the way of APB: All Points Bulletin.

Instead, as the sun sets on Prime Day, GTA 5 is on sale on PS5 in the US, and on every other platform you can think of in both North America and the UK – spurring another flurry of purchases for the Rockstar game that keeps on giving, both to players and to Sam Houser, who in 2020 was listed alongside his brother Dan in the Sunday Times Rich List (£310m combined, since you asked).

So what’s been GTA 5’s secret? In truth, there’s no one answer, but instead a host of little things that the solo game did better than anything else for a long, long time.

The way that supporting characters stopped speaking when interrupted by fender benders out in the open world, then naturalistically picked up the conversation by returning to the start of their sentence, has only recently been mimicked by Rockstar’s AAA peers. Other open world driving games still don’t have the convincingly irregular road surfaces of Los Santos – a quirk which makes its street races highly skill-based and surprisingly contemplative affairs. Then there’s my favorite feature: the way cutscenes start without you even noticing, as casually as a thought entering your head.