Rockstar Games hack brings to light fate of GTA 5 port for Nintendo Switch

Yet another revelation from the Rockstar Games hack seem to show a port of GTA 5 for the Nintendo Switch was “likely never in development.”

Nintendo have brought quite a few popular classics to the Switch this year, and Grand Theft Auto 5 is still a hugely popular game today, a decade after it’s release, seemed like a good candidate to join them.

Especially considering it runs on the same engine as Red Dead Redemption 1, which was released for the Switch in August.

So, it’s no surprise many fans of the game were dreaming of the day when a port would finally land on the Nintendo Switch.

But images from the GTA 5 source code leak posted to Reddit alongside some analysis of the code don’t seem to show much evidence to back up such hopes.

“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 post states.

The user then goes on to explain that mentions of the Switch were minimal, while mentions of the “NX” console codename — a placeholder for Nintendo’s next console project — were more frequent.

They conclude by stating references to Switch and NX in the source code were very likely speculative. Rockstar froze their plans when they realised the GTA 5 RAGE engine wouldn’t be compatible with Nintendo’s plans to use ARM for their consoles.

Most users in the thread seemed convinced by the analysis, but some felt with RDR 1 now available on the Switch, freezing the project seems a little confusing.

Others simply lamented a “missed opportunity.”

The thread’s OP seemed to find the chance of a GTA 6 release for future Nintendo consoles more convincing than a port of GTA 5 for the Switch, pointing out “the Wii U sold well at its launch, had the same architecture as its competitors, and did not receive GTA 5.”