Games Inbox: Will you boycott GTA 6 for being digital-only?

The Thursday letters page reacts to the GTA 6 pre-order news and pricing, as readers discuss the difficulty of updating Star Fox.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Taking a stand
So here we go, one of the most influential games in terms of sales at least, has decided to jump both feet first into the digital-only future pool.

I understand people’s frustrations, but just commenting about it online and stamping your feet is never going to change Rockstar’s mind, especially if these same people still buy it anyway on launch day.

The only way to make an impression is to hit them in the pocket. Companies follow the money and if the sales aren’t quite up to where they wanted or expected, then they will have no choice but to release a physical copy.

If you don’t like the price or the quality of the product being offered to you then by all means don’t buy it. And before anyone thinks that is me getting on my high horse. Take a step back and think about it. That’s not me giving you that ultimatum, that’s Rockstar saying, ‘take it or leave it’.

Take an even further step back and realise it will have been over 13 years since the previous title by the time of this release, so what is another couple of months if it means you get a physical copy in your hands?

I’m not much of a fan anyway so I won’t be buying it, but I suspect a lot of people will.
freeway 77

Grand theft software
Are Rockstar having a laugh? £75 for a game box with no disc? No manual I’d imagine too. Is this the real theft happening now? Kinda of kidding but with this information in hand now I’ll be waiting on the PC version. Even if it’s two years away, I’ll wait. I have plenty to keep me going until then.

Anyone in GC Towers been privy to a preview? Can you say even if you have?
Bobwallett

GC: No we can’t, but Rockstar rarely do previews – they don’t need to.

Possible boycott
I’m not liking the fact that GTA 6 physical copies will only contain a code. I’m feeling like I might boycott the game in protest. Games should be available on disc or digital. That’s why I bought a PlayStation 5 with a disc drive.

I hope other companies don’t start this practise. And yes, I do know some games are already download-only currently. Thankfully, except for indies, they are in the minority.

Enjoy the heat! I assume GC Towers is air conditioned.
DB

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Wait and see
I suppose it was predictable that GTA 6 was going to be digital only at launch. Oh well, guess I’ll just wait on the physical edition, should they ever release such a thing (I know, I’m old fashioned).

Plenty of other exciting games to buy and play beforehand anyways.
Ryan

90s hero
As a former Mega Drive owner I think we have to admit that Sonic has never been a contender outside of that one console. The second he moved onto the Saturn and beyond it all fell apart. They never found a way to make the game work in 3D and it says everything that Sonic Frontiers is the best effort when it took them 30 years to get there and it still sold less than 5 million copies.

There’re tons of indie games that sell more than that and it really puts into perspective how much of a second-stringer Sonic is in the modern world. He might sell movies and T-shirts, but he sure doesn’t sell games.

Is he cooler than Mario? Maybe in theory, but in truth he’s not really in the same league anymore.
Vida

New follow-up
Nice review of Star Fox, remember loving the original back in the 90s but given that it’s now the year 2026… won’t be partaking in pointless nostalgia. Time is too short to play slavish remakes, at least Resident Evil and Final Fantasy 7 have been fairly ambitious new games, offering a new modernised experience. To pick up your point on where Nintendo might go next. I have noticed something of a pattern with a few of the remakes we’ve had so far… also from third party studios no doubt under strict supervision.

Firstly, we had MercurySteam’s Metroid 2 remake on the 3DS, which after its success spun out into the all-new Metroid Dread on the Switch. Then we had the Game Boy Color’s Zelda: Link’s Awakening (apologies to the developers but I forget [Grezzo – GC]) which again was spun out into the all-new Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom. These sequels to the remakes did bring more ambitious ideas into the mix, while retaining their mostly retro gameplay design, after the studio’s proved themselves to the Big N.

We would have probably gotten the same thing with Advance Wars 1+2 if anyone had bought it and I’m sure there are others in Nintendo’s surprisingly vast array of OG Switch remakes and remasters that could also fit the pattern.

I expect this Star Fox will sell pretty well, and so a sequel to the remake along the lines of the aforementioned titles would be a possibility. Offering a few new features and new level designs but mostly the same retro into-the-screen shooter gameplay. I’m not sure you could do the same with Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, that will more likely spin out a slavish Majora’s Mask remake than a new sequel, to fill another schedule gap a few years down the line.
Marc

GC: Star Fox has never been a big seller, so the remake’s success is far from assured. But if it is a hit then, yes, we would not be surprised to see Nintendo greenlight a new game, in fact that’s already a current rumour.

Short and sweet
I really hope the Star Fox remake does well. The original was always one of my favourites and I’ll definitely be doing my part in picking it up, I just don’t know how well its old school gameplay is going to go down today. I remember back in the N64 days even, a lot of my friends thought it was too short and simple.

I’m not sure it wouldn’t have been better to just make a new game straight off the bat, because the remake looks pretty expensive as it is, but I guess we’ll see how things play out.
Onibee

Expensive ideas
Nice review of Star Fox. RE: what the series could do next to modernise and appeal to the mainstream; in a world where production budget wasn’t a limitation, I’d say the approach is already provided by the likes of Naughty Dog, Insomniac, and Sony Santa Monica.

As you say, the Star Fox games already seem to work best when funnelling you through set pieces, so just make those absolutely massive, with overwhelming spectacle, wild cinematic camera movements and semi-interactive near misses in the same way a lot of the highlight moments work in all those games Sony devs have delivered since Uncharted 2.

I do kind of take issue with the trend these sorts of games set, with player control seamlessly snatched away and given back, as dictated by the script. Like a roller-coaster claiming to be a real adventure. But if any game is going to suit that method in particular, it’s surely Star Fox.

The obvious issues are the budgets for God Of War, Uncharted, and Spider-Man, and a likely (and understandable) reluctance for any sensible business to dedicate that sort of resource to a game like Star Fox. But that’s the combination I think would work best.

It’s kind of like asking for a modern F-Zero to consist of an entire futuristic open city, with tracks integrated into it and scope for exploration and an interesting campaign. Nintendo isn’t going to fund it, but those feel like the sort of evolutionary paths I’d want to see these series take.
Panda

Inbox also-rans
Nice to see that GoldenEye 007 was the second-best selling N64 game. Younger gamers today will never understand how big that game was at the time, the multiplayer was out of this world.
Xane

It doesn’t seem to have been acknowledged much but it was the 30th anniversary of Quake on Monday. I’m guessing the lack of fanfare means those reboot rumours aren’t happening.
HEJ

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