San Andreas online a 'sacrifice' too far

News - Rockstar play it safe

Rockstar's forthcoming money-spinner GTA: San Andreas will definitely not feature online play in any form, creative director Dan Houser told magazine Power Unlimited, stating that "we would have to sacrifice too much for it."

"We have a lot of script writers working on GTA, and they use so many scenarios to build the story - it's impossible to do that in an online game, that problem has not been solved," Houser added by way of explanation. Of course, whilst only the PS2 version of the game was referenced in this discussion (it being the only rendition of the title confirmed thus far), it's a fair bet that neither the Xbox or PC versions of the game will feature online support either - given the entirely ported nature of past games and the director's reasoning.

Houser did hint that online play might be something Rockstar would consider in the future: "We are thinking about it," he conceded, "but it's simply better to do the things we want to see in GTA in a single-player game. I'm not saying that online games aren't fun, but I do believe that online games are not yet ready for the immersive gameplay that GTA has to offer." We'll bring you everything there is on San Andreas as and when we get it.