September 17 marked the tenth anniversary of GTA 5's widely acclaimed release. Rumors of a GTA 5 Switch port have been circulating the industry for nearly as long, since 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 made their way to the Switch over the years inspired additional hope among the fandom that the fifth mainline entry in the Grand Theft Auto series would eventually follow suit.
Be that as it may, a Switch port of GTA 5 was seemingly never in development. That's according to a newly shared analysis of the game's source code conducted by Reddit user RafaelSwi, who discovered that the entire GTA 5 codebase contains just two references to the Nintendo Switch, and only a couple more mentions of the console's NX64 codename. And while that observation alone might suggest Rockstar once had plans to bring the game to the Switch, all of the discovered references appear to be tied to utility functions and objects that in no way indicate Grand Theft Auto 5 was ever close to running on the ARM system-on-chip architecture utilized by the Nvidia Tegra X1 powering the Switch.
GTA V for Nintendo Switch was likely never in development
byu/RafaelSwi inGamingLeaksAndRumours
Any GTA 5 Switch Port Plans Were Likely Scrapped Prior to 2017
Reflecting on this find, RafaelSwi speculated that Rockstar might have initially left open the possibility of bringing the game to the Switch, but canceled those plans after it was announced that the Wii U successor would use the 64-bit ARM architecture. That theory would explain why the source code contains more mentions of the console's NX codename than its official Switch moniker. The chances of this theory being based on a severely outdated codebase appear slim, as the latest files found in the massive leak are dated from the second half of 2021.
The Switch port of Red Dead Redemption that was released in August 2023 is still the only RAGE engine game that has made its way to Nintendo's hit console to date. RafaelSwi asserted that trying to run GTA 5 on the Switch before the engine itself was ported to the console would have been "a waste of time," concluding that there's no indication that the game was ever in active development for the hybrid console.
Whether GTA 5 might finally make its way to Nintendo hardware with the rumored 2024 launch of the Switch successor remains to be seen. But given recent precedent, what's clear is that Grand Theft Auto fans shouldn't hold their breath for GTA 6 on the Switch 2, for all the same reasons that made the Switch miss out on the previous game.
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Related Forum: Grand Theft Auto Forum
Source: https://gamerant.com/gta-5-nintendo-switch-port-chances-plans-leak/
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