GTA 5: Sony PlayStation gets promo shaft in favor of Xbox, Windows

by Beatweek Staff

“Is GTA 5 not coming to Sony?” asks one ponderous Beatweek reader who has clearly chosen Sony’s PlayStation over Microsoft’s Xbox as a console gaming weapon of choice. The short answer: of course it is. Nothing has been officially announced as to which platforms Grand Theft Auto V will be launched on, but every previous version of the game has been released on PlayStation so there’s no reason to believe a change is in order. The game has also existed on Microsoft Windows from the start, and on the Microsoft Xbox console platform since GTA 3. Recently, a mobile version of GTA 3 was also released for Apple’s iPad and iPhone devices, and various mobile versions have been released on Sony’s PlayStation Portable PSP device. So why does PlayStation, which is always included in GTA releases but never seems to be promoted as such, get the shaft?

Part of that is the slowly declining nature of the PlayStation platform in general. Microsoft’s Xbox wasn’t expected to be a success in light of the the fact that the company had no prior console experience and the fact that nearly all new Microsoft ventures (Zune, Windows Phone 7, various tablet) in the past decade have been failures. Yet it didn’t take long for Xbox to gain a major foothold in the console market, taking marketshare directly away from the PlayStation and leading some game developers to focus on Xbox exclusively. In a word, Xbox has momentum – and PlayStation clearly does not. Sony is attempting to rectify that with the launch of the PlayStation Vita this year, but that’s a mobile gaming device. When it comes to home consoles, Sony may have to wait until the PlayStation 4 in order to regain momentum. For its part, Sony says that might still be another five years away. In the mean time, games like GTA 5 and others like it will continue to be released for both Xbox and PlayStation, but more often promoted for the former than the latter.