GTA 5 leaving Game Pass as year of GTA 6 hype kicks off

polygon.com:

Game Pass ended 2023 with a strong lineup that included heavy hitters like Remnant: From the Ashes, Against the Storm, Far Cry 6, and Rise of the Tomb Raider. 2024 will kick off with a handful of big games leaving Microsoft’s subscription service, including Grand Theft Auto 5, Persona 3 Portable, and Persona 4 Golden.

Those meaty games are leaving Game Pass in the next two weeks, so if you haven’t started your Persona playthroughs… good luck. You have until mid-January to sprint through those hefty role-playing games.

Grand Theft Auto 5 will complete its third tour on Xbox Game Pass this month; Rockstar Games’ open-world crime epic was re-added to Game Pass in July 2023. GTA 5 was previously made available on Xbox Game Pass from April to August 2021, and before that from January to May 2020. Like those first two runs, GTA 5 is only available to Xbox One and Xbox Series X subscribers (both versions of the game are available), though it can be cloud-streamed to mobile devices or a PC.

Xbox Game Pass’ closest competitor — PlayStation Plus Extra — just got Grand Theft Auto 5 in December. GTA 5 is currently available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 with PS Plus Extra, Sony’s middle tier of its PlayStation Plus service.

When Persona 4 Golden and Persona 3 Portable vanish from Game Pass, they’ll have been available on the subscription service for about a year. Atlus brought both of those games to Game Pass last January. Persona 3 Reload is slated to be available through Game Pass in February, when Atlus’ remake launches on PS4, PS5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

Grand Theft Auto 5’s moving and shaking across game subscription platforms comes shortly after Rockstar showed off Grand Theft Auto 6 for the first time