Leet | Grand Theft Auto V is already running on Nintendo Switch

You can’t buy and play the Switch’s Grand Theft Auto V (yet?), but you can run it on the hybrid console.

Daniel Bódi

21.04.2024 – Actually, what is strange, or rather surprising, is that in the last 10 years, not once has a Grand Theft Auto V Nintendo Switch edition been considered by the developers of Rockstar, or perhaps by the notoriously money-hungry managers of the publisher Take Two. There is no question that it would be a great success, because GTA V is played and bought by millions to this day, and a portable version of it would not only sell well on Switch, but might even boost sales of the hybrid console. It is also not an excuse that the already rather weak iron could not handle it, since the game was originally released for the Xbox 360-PS3 pair.

But despite the arguments, we can now be pretty sure that GTA V will not be officially released on Switch. On the one hand, because there would have been plenty of opportunities to do so 7 years after the release of the machine, instead they fluffed it with the horrible renovation of III, Vice City and San Andreas, and on the other hand, the successor of the Switch is coming soon, so now Rockstar has run out of reasons to deal with the old machine. If such a release is planned, it is much more likely that it will appear on the more powerful Nintendo console. Yes, right!

Yes, but in December, the GTA V source code was leaked (wholly, stolen) and the modders, including the Superstar South community, who have been working on one thing for months: of course, GTA V on its Switch port. The first attempts were obviously quite poor (e.g. the program crashed before loading), but now they have stepped up:

you can play the prologue of GTA V on Switch.

Compared to the entire game, the 20 minutes of the prologue (and I may have said a lot) seems rather short, especially since even it runs quite badly, but the fact is that the game was launched not thanks to the developers, but by deciphering and modifying the source code GTA V on a Switch running in handheld mode is a commendable achievement. What’s more, thanks to my limitless fortune-telling, I can also say well in advance, with my hand on my glass globe, that there could easily be a moment when the Switch will do well not only with the prologue, but with the entire open world. After all, we were also surprised by the Xbox 360, but it still worked.

However, there is still a long way to go: unforeseen technical problems may occur, which could lead the project to a dead end, or, knowing Take Two’s sometimes overzealous lawyers, it could even be shot down legally before they even get there. And if a Switch release is indeed planned, it could very well happen.