Major GTA V leak may have been debunked

A leak which claimed GTA 5 would be making its way to the Nintendo Switch may have been debunked after a Redditor took the time to sift through leaked source code for the game.

29th Dec 2023 22:09

Images via Rockstar

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A leak which claimed GTA 5 would be making its way to the Nintendo Switch may have been debunked after a Redditor took the time to sift through leaked source code for the game.

Their findings show that there were more references to Google Stadia than the Switch, and that claims that GTA 5 was coming to the handheld console were more based on hope than any concrete evidence.

A Redditor has used the leaked GTA 5 source code to debunk the game coming to Nintendo Switch

Based on their analysis of the GTA 5 source code, which was released earlier this month, Reddit user RafaelSwi said they don’t think the latest game in the franchise was ever intended to come to Nintendo Switch.

They said: “The game was likely never in active development for the Nintendo Switch, but rather for the NX(console codename) based on pure hardware speculation.

“The Project was probably frozen after the revelation that the NX would use ARM.”

They went on to share several examples of the Switch and its codename being mentioned throughout the leaked source code.

RafaelSwi continued: “The number of mentions of the name "Nintendo Switch '' are extremely small (2), compared to the number of references to the console's codename (NX64). Some elements were ported and adjusted for the NX64, but nothing concrete that the game would be running on ARM.

“The RAGE ENGINE was ported to ARM64 with the release of Red Dead Redemption 1 for the Nintendo Switch. As GTA 5 runs on top of the RAGE ENGINE, it would be a waste of time to try running GTA 5 on the Switch before the Engine itself. More references were found to Stadia (YETI) (x86) than the name "Nintendo Switch".

“Any post claiming that GTA 5 was or is in development for the Nintendo Switch is completely based on hopium.

“If the mention of a platform name in the source code meant that the game was in development for that platform, GTA 5 was in development for the Macintosh.”

Ultimately it seems RafaelSwi is suggesting that Rockstar were keeping the option to produce the game for the Switch open prior to it being announced, however scrapped these plans after it was announced that the console would be using ARM architecture.

Red Dead Redemption was released on the Switch in August this year, and is currently the only game on the console which uses the RAGE engine.

The recent addition of the RAGE engine suggests that there could still be hope for the game coming to Nintendo consoles, especially as recent rumours about the Switch’s successor have been circulating. This is even more relevant in relation to GTA 6.

Megan Cooke

About The Author

Megan Cooke

Megan is GGRecon's Evening & Weekend News Writer. She has an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing and is working towards finishing her masters in Journalism. When she isn’t writing about games she can be found reading romance novels or playing cosy games like Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, APICO, and Disney Dreamlight Valley.

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