Unfortunately, the latest GTA V leak spells bad news for Switch owners who are still hoping to play the game on Nintendo’s hit console…

September 17th marked the tenth anniversary of GTA V’s widely acclaimed release. Rumours of a Grand Theft Auto V Switch port have been circulating in the industry for almost as long. They started popping up before Nintendo’s hybrid console even hit the market in early 2017.

The fact that some of Rockstar’s other ambitious open-world games, such as L.A. Noire and Red Dead Redemption, have made their way to the Switch over the years giving fans further hope that the fifth mainline entry in the Grand Theft Auto series will follow suit.

Either way, a GTA V Switch port was apparently never in development. That’s according to a recently shared analysis of the game’s source code by Reddit user RafaelSwi. He discovered that the entire codebase contained only two references to the Nintendo Switch, and only a few other mentions of the console’s codename NX64. This observation alone may indicate that Rockstar once had plans to release the game on Switch. But all the discovered references seem to be to utility functions and objects that in no way suggest that Grand Theft Auto V was ever close to running on the ARM system-on-chip architecture used by Nvidia.

Could GTA V Switch port plans have been cancelled before 2017?

Reflecting on this discovery, RafaelSwi speculated that Rockstar had initially been left open the possibility of bringing the game to Switch. But those plans were scrapped after it was announced that the Wii U’s successor would use the 64-bit ARM architecture. This theory would explain why the source code mentions the console’s codename NX more than the official Switch moniker.

The chance that this theory is based on a heavily outdated codebase seems slim, as the latest files found in the massive leak are from the second half of 2021.

Red Dead Redemption’s Switch port was released in August 2023. It is still the only RAGE motor game to make its way to Nintendo’s hit console to date. RafaelSwi claimed it would have been a “waste of time” to try running GTA V on the Switch before the engine itself was ported to the console. He concluded that there was no indication that the game was ever actively developed for the hybrid console.

Whether the game, as rumoured, will finally make its way to Nintendo’s hardware with the release of the Switch’s successor in 2024 remains to be seen. But given recent precedents, it’s clear that Grand Theft Auto fans shouldn’t be waiting with bated breath for GTA VI on Switch 2. For the same reasons, the Switch missed out on the previous game.

Could we have gotten a bunch of Grand Theft Auto V DLC?!

As reported by Insider Gaming, the source code leak for Grand Theft Auto V also includes references to the game’s eight single-player DLC expansions. These have been cancelled in favour of further updates to GTA Online. While the leak revealed plenty of early tools for the game, this discovery is perhaps the most interesting of all. Following the release of Grand Theft Auto V in 2013, Rockstar was open about plans for single-player DLC in blog posts. But there was never an official announcement about specific contents. This shows that huge plans were in motion at one time.

Grand Theft Auto V’s Deleted Single-Player DLCs:

• SP Assassination Pack
• SP Manhunt Pack
• SP Norman Pack
• Agent Trevor
• Relationship Pack
• Enterprise Pack
• Prologue DLC
• Liberty V DLC

The names of some of the cancelled single-player DLCs are immediately apparent. In the “Prologue DLC,” players could go back in time to discover what happened in the prequels to the game’s iconic prologue. And “LibertyV” suggests that the players were headed to Liberty City for another adventure. Even last year, there were rumours of a Liberty City DLC for GTA Online. Although this has yet to materialize, these leaks suggest that Liberty City has already been in the works for the past decade.

“Agent Trevor” is the only overt reference to the trio of protagonists, but it would be surprising if Franklin and Michael weren’t involved in previous DLC plans.

The gaming industry has been hit by several leaks recently. Grand Theft Auto VI itself leaked late last year. Meanwhile, the constant leaks from Insomniac Games are the talk of the industry right now.

Source: Insider Gaming, Reddit

GTA V for Nintendo Switch was likely never in development
byu/RafaelSwi inGamingLeaksAndRumours