The launch of GTA 6, with console hardware overpriced and facing scarcity, should be perfect for a game streaming breakthrough – but nobody seems to care

Earlier this week, there was a ripple of excitement among long-suffering Xbox fans over news that the platform had struck an exclusive deal for the streaming rights to Grand Theft Auto VI – suggesting that while the game would launch on both PlayStation and Xbox, Microsoft’s Xcloud service would be the only place you could stream it, at least initially.

That turns out not to be true. Xbox Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ball debunked the report, stating that “the game will not be streaming exclusively or to PC” – suggesting that not only will GTA 6 be available to stream elsewhere (presumably on Sony’s cloud service), but there will also be restrictions in place for which client devices will be able to stream the game.

It’s fair to wonder if there was at least some kind of a smouldering ember generating the smoke for this report, even if it was mistaken in the end. The extent to which PlayStation has dominated the preorder numbers for GTA 6 , taking a share that’s outsized even proportional to the relative installed base of the consoles, is apparently a source of much consternation within Xbox. Figuring out some way to capitalise on the biggest game launch of the year should be a short-term priority for the division, and one would assume there are ideas being batted around to that effect – which sometimes results in those ideas breaking containment before anything is agreed upon.

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