Grand Theft Auto V is one of the most heavily anticipated PC game releases of this year, and it officially launched today.
GTA V launched for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 back on September 17, 2013, but unfortunately, it has spread slowly to other platforms. Over a year after its release, GTA V launched on Xbox One and Playstation 4 (November 18, 2014). It has taken more than a year and a half after GTA V's original release for the game now to reach the PC.
Despite the relatively limited initial launch, though, the game broke six world records in its first month of sales.
In moving to the PC, GTA V brings a number of new features to attract PC gamers. The game can be played at 4K now, and the lighting, shadows and textures have been enhanced, according to developer Rockstar Games. In addition to the resolution and lighting enhancements, the game also now has new weapons, vehicles, activities, additional wildlife, denser traffic, a new foliage system, enhanced damage and weather effects, and numerous other changes.
Knowing that many gamers have already purchased the game for consoles, Rockstar Games is allowing users to transfer their existing GTA Online characters from game consoles to the PC version. The developer said those who do so will also be rewarded with exclusive content as a reward for their loyalty to GTA V and the GTA series.
For those who like to record and share their game footage, GTA V also includes a program called the Rockstar Editor. This program will allow gamers to record, edit, and upload their footage to YouTube.
In anticipation of this release, Nvidia released a new driver that is optimized for GTA V. The driver adds support for SLI configurations and should provide a performance boost over older drivers.
If you want to get your copy of GTA V for the PC, it's available now from numerous online and brick-and-mortar retailers for the standard retail price of $59.99.
If you want to try and win yourself a free copy of GTA V, you can pop over to our forums and enter a drawing.
Update 1, 4/14/15, 1:30pm PT: AMD also just announced new drivers for GTA V. The AMD Catalyst 15.4 (Beta) driver (which contains AMD Catalyst Display Driver version 14.502.1014) for Windows promises better performance and stability, and AMD said that the title is part AMD's Gaming Evolved family. As such, it includes AMD's Contact Hardening Shadows (CHS) technology, which AMD said "dynamically hardens or softens a shadow's edges depending on the distance of the shadow from the light source and object casting that shadow."
Update 2, 4/14/15, 1:35pm PT: Some users have experience issues installing GTA V; head here to learn about a fix.
Update 3, 4/20/15, 10am PT: AMD reached out to us over the weekend to correct what it told us about GTA V and Gaming Evolved. "While GTA V has Gaming Evolved features, it is not an official Gaming Evolved title and as a result shouldn't be mentioned as such," an AMD rep said via email. AMD also sent over updated language on AMD's CHS:
"The game includes AMD's Contact Hardening Shadows (CHS). This technique dynamically hardens or softens a shadow's edges depending on the distance of the shadow from the light source and object casting that shadow. This means softer shadows that diffuse more realistically. To enable CHS in the game, simply select AMD CHS from the 'Soft Shadows' drop down menu. The game also has a built-in benchmark, which should make it easy to test different hardware configurations."
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