Almost three years after it was confirmed to be happening, Meta’s VR version of the iconic Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has been put on ice.
“GTA: San Andreas is on hold indefinitely while we both focus on other projects,” Meta Quest said of its own studios as well as Rockstar Games, both via comments on its official YouTube account as well as in a statement to IGN. “We look forward to working with our friends at Rockstar in the future.”
While we never saw any in-game assets on or after the initial announcement, at the time Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said that it would offer players “an entirely new way to experience the iconic open world in virtual reality,” and it had reportedly already been some time in the making.
Meta’s VR aspirations have been shaky of late, with spending reportedly being heavily reduced across key parts of its VR operations in favour of pursuing the “metaverse” and AI.
Take Two Interactive and Rockstar, understandably, are also preoccupied with a little ol’ project known as Grand Theft Auto VI, so it stands to reason they’d want to divert resources, however minor they might have been for the San Andreas VR project, over to more lucrative endeavours.
The most recent re-release of 2004’s mammoth PS2 hit was as part of the ill-fated Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition, which incidentally dropped not long after the announcement of San Andreas VR and was widely panned for shoddy, low-effort conversions to modern platforms.
