A pair of recent reports claimed that Rockstar Games had canned modern remasters of Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto IV due to the poor reception of 2021’s Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. And now a follow-up comment from an insider behind one of those reports has stated that the company also halted plans for a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S version of Red Dead Redemption 2.
As noted by PlayStation Lifestyle, Rockstar insider Tez posted a reply on the Rockstar forums in response to a question regarding possible PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of the 2018 game. Tez plainly stated that they had “heard about those a long time ago” along with plans to make an enhanced Rockstar Editor (a tool that lets players record, edit, and share videos with an array of camera options and tools), but they were all canceled or halted.
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Rockstar never officially announced PS5 or Xbox Series X|S ports of the highly rated sequel, but they were assumed to come in the future. Before Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, Rockstar often rereleased its games quite often on newer platforms. Titles like L.A. Noire, Bully, The Warriors, Grand Theft Auto, and Manhunt were all rereleased on later systems they didn’t originally launch on, but Grand Theft Auto was the most prominent, showing up on both generations after the PS2 originals. Rockstar’s previous game before Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto V, had also been released on the PS4 and Xbox One generation as well as the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, showing a pattern that Rockstar was presumably going to continue with its cowboy epic.
However, those plans seem to have changed as Rockstar has been allocating more resources for the next Grand Theft Auto. The aforementioned reports stated that Rockstar was choosing to focus on that upcoming installment of the series instead of chasing remasters. A recent official blog post about Red Dead Online and Grand Theft Auto Online also said the company was “steadily moving more development resources towards the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series — understanding more than ever the need to exceed players’ expectations and for this next entry to be the best it can possibly be.” As such, it appears as though the company wants to take its resources and look ahead to the future.
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The PS5 and Xbox Series X|S do run the game better than the previous generation of hardware, but this comes without some of the new technical settings and improvements that a native app would be able to have like ray tracing, dramatically faster loading, and a dedicated performance mode. Red Dead Redemption 2 runs at 4K at a locked 30 frames per second on modern consoles according to Digital Foundry and Backwards Compatible, but it won’t be able to fully take advantage of the extra horsepower without a native port or, at least, an update and neither of which seem to be coming.