GTA 5 on PC’s free upgrade to match current-gen consoles finally has a concrete arrival date, giving people a distraction from GTA 6 chatter for all of 0.5 seconds

There’s GTA news! No, sit your bum down, it’s not GTA 6 trailer news. It’s GTA 5 news. The free update that’ll finally bring the PC version of the most lucrative game ever to game has just been given a concrete release date – it’s dropping on March 4.

Having teased this update was coming towards the end of last year, Rockstar’s just revealed the date via a fresh newswire post, in which it details all the sparkly additions and tweaks the new spec will bring PC folks so they can on longer be mocked by their PS5 and Xbox Series X/S cousins.

So, what are you getting? Well, “a range of new vehicles and upgrades at Hao’s Special Works”, ambient animal encounters, and a “refreshed Landing Page”, as well as access to a career progress tracker and the ability to sign up for a GTA+ membership on PC. I’m sure you’re absolutely stoked about that last one.

Hardware-wise, the update will also bring all or some the following, depending on what kind of rig you’re packing:

• Ray tracing features only available on PC such as ambient occlusion and global illumination — plus ray traced shadows and reflections first debuted on consoles
• Support for AMD FSR1 and FSR3, and NVIDIA DLSS 3
• Faster loading times using SSD and DirectStorage on supported devices and configurations
• Enhanced support for higher resolutions, higher aspect ratios, and higher framerates
• DualSense controller support, with adaptive triggers
• Enhanced audio with support for Dolby Atmos and improved fidelity of speech, cinematics, and music

“Support for the previous version of GTA V will continue, allowing anyone whose hardware does not currently meet the minimum requirements of the new upgrade to keep playing,” Rockstar adds, “This also ensures that support for FiveM will continue uninterrupted while we work to extend support for it on the upgraded version.”

That said, it makes clear that “the original version of GTA Online on PC will be a separate instance, and players who remain on that version will not be able to play in sessions together with those on the upgraded version”. It sounds like if you upgrade, you’ll be able to opt to revert to the old version in order to play with mates who’re stuck on it.

Will you be taking advantage of this excuse to jump back into GTA 5? Did you manage to stop thinking about GTA 6 while reading this article? Let us know below!