Rockstar is building its own tiny Game Pass for a "rotating assortment" of games, starting with those terrible GTA remasters

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Definitive Edition
(Image credit: Rockstar)

GTA Plus now includes a "rotating assortment of classic Rockstar Games titles," starting with the maligned Definitive Edition remasters of the classic Grand Theft Auto 3 trilogy.

Launched in 2022, GTA Plus is a $6 monthly subscription available in the PS5 and Xbox Series X and S version of Grand Theft Auto 5. It offers an array of benefits aimed at GTA Online members, including a monthly deposit of $500,000 for your in-game bank account, a selection of cars and bonus items, and regular boosts to cash and RP for various activities.

GTA Online players have remained skeptical of GTA Plus's value proposition, but now there's a major additional benefit: access to whole classic games. For now, those games are just the Definitive Edition remasters of Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas, but Rockstar says other classics from its catalog will rotate in. That catalog includes everything from Max Payne and Red Dead Redemption to Bully and Manhunt, so there's certainly a variety of potential inclusions here. (Personally, I'm holding out for Rockstar's Table Tennis.)

Those three GTA titles are bonafide classics that laid the groundwork for all the best open-world games that would follow, but these particular remastered editions were widely maligned at launch for numerous bugs and missing graphical features. Patches have fixed some of the collection's most egregious flaws, but the Definitive Editions still fall well short of being the remasters these classics deserve. But hey, at least you'll now be able to enjoy them as part of an extremely tiny, publisher-specific version of Xbox Game Pass. 

Is this a preview of what's to come with GTA 6?

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

Read more
Lester sitting at a computer in some artwork for GTA Online
Some GTA 5 players can't bring their characters to the new PC upgrade, and the open-world game's mixed Steam reviews are hammering FPS caps and a lack of text chat
GTA 5
GTA 5 is giving PC players a free upgrade that brings it up to par with the console versions and adds some PC-exclusive features
Vice City
Rockstar literally just took down a Liberty City GTA 5 mod, but that's not stopping these modders porting Vice City into GTA 4 - and they might just get away with it
Players in GTA Online running businesses and playing missions
It sounds like GTA Online could have a life after GTA 6 – but after 400 hours in Los Santos, I'm ready to say goodbye
GTA Online The Criminal Enterprises
GTA Online fans find a "loophole" to enable crossplay across PC and PS4, and apparently all you need is a jailbroken console, a dev copy of GTA 5, and access to a private server
GTA 6
As some analysts "hope" GTA 6 will normalize $100 games, one Baldur's Gate 3 dev points out that "prices haven't risen with inflation"
Latest in Open World
Rise of the Ronin
A year after its PS5 launch, Rise of the Ronin debuts on PC to "Mixed" reviews and performance complaints: "Stuttering on a 4090 is just... no"
Rise of the Ronin's photo mode offers some wonderful shots
On the heels of Rise of the Ronin's PC launch, its director says there's a "significant" amount of Japanese Switch gamers: "I am closely watching how this will change with the release of Switch 2"
Death Stranding 2 kiss
Hideo Kojima says "it was very difficult to direct" Death Stranding 2's big kiss scene, but Norman Reedus thinks "it was niiice" locking lips with Léa Seydoux
Death Stranding 2
Death Stranding 2 packs on a third obvious Metal Gear Solid reference with cover art throwing back to MGS2's bizarre box art featuring Japanese pop superstar Gackt
Former Xbox boss says GTA: San Andreas and its infamously NSFW Hot Coffee minigame "signified a maturing of the industry" and put games "on par with movies and music"
Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori
This stunning open-world horse game smashed its $65,000 Kickstarter goal straight away, and it's bringing my favorite part of Red Dead Redemption 2 to 13th-century Mongolia
Latest in News
Overwatch 2
My hopes for an Overwatch anime or Diablo horror movie are going strong as Blizzard president points out "we are Blizzard Entertainment, and not simply Blizzard Games"
The New Thunderbolts leaping into action
Marvel's New Thunderbolts* comic steals the MCU's asterisk, and the reason why is just as big of a mystery
Pokemon Go players brace for the worst as Niantic is sold off for $3.5 billion: "This game is entering its death knell"
Stamp PSP
A 16-year-old pitch for a newly discovered first-party PSP game has me mourning the death of PlayStation's Japan Studio all over again
Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3
Baldur's Gate 3 Astarion actor Neil Newbon says he "got rid of" agents who deliberately kept him away from video game gigs: "They just didn't want me to do it"
Mass Effect
Jennifer Hale says she didn't see a single line as Mass Effect's Commander Shepard until it was time to record: "It was all cold reading on the spot"