Half of Rockstar’s music promise is missing

Rockstar’s new music page carries one sentence about the size of the radio line-up, and it names two genres the rest of the page does not contain. The sentence reads: “Spanning stations dedicated to everything from Classic Rock to Talk Radio, Grand Theft Auto VI features the biggest and widest-ranging selection of in-game radio and podcasts yet.” The six stations the same page reveals are Cocoteo FM, modern Latin; Back Country Radio, renegade country; AfroBank FM, African music from 20th-century classics to amapiano and 3-step; The Chamber, metal; Flash FM, pop; and Dirty South Classics, regional rap and hip-hop. There is no classic rock station in that list and no talk station, so the two categories chosen to describe the span of the line-up are the two categories missing from it.

Neither category is new to the series, which is what makes the sentence odd rather than wrong. The previous game shipped both ends of that span in 2013: Los Santos Rock Radio was the classic rock station, and GTA V launched with West Coast Talk Radio and Blaine County Radio as its two talk channels. So “from Classic Rock to Talk Radio” describes a range the series already had, and the claim being made is not about the ends of it but about the quantity in the middle. The ends being absent from the six named stations means the widest thing about the sentence is currently untestable: the range is asserted, and the station that would sit at its far edge has not been shown.

“Biggest” is a claim about a roster, and the roster is not published. Rockstar says the six are a first look and that more are coming, which leaves the comparison to be made against the last game — and there the denominators disagree. The reference lists that enumerate GTA V’s launch line-up give 17 stations, 15 of them music channels plus the two talk stations, while others count 18 or 19 depending on whether the talk channels are counted separately and whether the post-launch additions are included. The figure those lists share is roughly 240 licensed songs in the 2013 game. Nothing Rockstar has published gives a number for GTA VI. What the new page’s own data provides is 18 songs, three in each of six station previews — samples rather than playlists, and therefore not a contradiction of anything. It does mean the page that asserts the biggest line-up yet is also the page that contains no quantity with which to test it.

The other half of the promise is the part that has not arrived. Rockstar’s album announcement on 17 September said more detail was coming on two things: the game’s dynamic score, and what it called the next evolution of in-game radio. The radio half landed on 8 October. The score half did not. The word score does not appear on the music page outside the album’s own copy, and the only reference to the score in the 8 October material is, as the relays of Rockstar’s announcement put it, a promise of later detail; the Chinese coverage carrying that line is explicit that the radio reveal is one part of the sound design and that other parts are still to come. This site wrote on 30 September that music was the only piece of the game still publicly in the pipeline. One of its two halves has now left that pipeline. The dynamic score is what is left, and 41 days out it is the only element of the game Rockstar has said it will detail and has not.

The album half of the page moved nothing at all. Its soundtrack section repeats the 17 September announcement exactly: 34 original tracks, released on 19 November, with the same six singles already streaming — Yung Lean with Future and Metro Boomin, Travis Scott, CA7RIEL and Paco Amoroso with Pink Pantheress, Fred again.. and Etienne de Crécy, Morgan Wallen, Rauw Alejandro, and Keith Richards. Several summaries of the 8 October reveal folded the stations and the album together as one announcement; they are separate products, and only one of them changed this week. The page also carries the age-rating block again — the same seven descriptors with In-Game Purchases, in the same order, and still no marker for online interaction, which is the line every GTA V record carries and this game’s block still does not. That is now a fourth page in this campaign printing the identical block.

Nothing here changes what a buyer is buying. Grand Theft Auto VI releases on 19 November for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, digital pre-load opens on 12 November, the two editions are $79.99 and $99.99, and the retail box holds a download code rather than a disc. What to watch for is two numbers rather than any station: the final count of stations and the songs on each, the two figures that would make the word biggest mean something, and the dynamic score, which is the last piece of the music Rockstar has promised and not delivered.