After the Grand Theft Auto 5 Premium Online Edition was outed by photos of the game's box and GAME started selling the title in the UK a tad early, Rockstar has now officially announced this new edition.
Available for PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One in retail and digitally for both as well as on PC, the Premium Online Edition includes the Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack, and is out now.
This release is the payoff after about a month's worth of waiting and speculation following an erroneous product listing appearing on Amazon for a "Grand Theft Auto 5 Premium Edition". The page was pulled moments after it went live, but word and screenshots have already gotten out, raising the question of what such an edition could possibly include.
After the edition was practically confirmed by the South Korean rating board, images of the now-renamed Premium Online Edition appeared online yesterday, showing that some people have gotten their hands on the game early.
This established just what's so premium about this edition — it's GTA 5 with the Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack included. The release costs the standard full price for AAA titles, meaning $60, and the full price of the standard edition of the game has been reduced to $30.
The Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack, also available separately, contains a load of in-game items and vehicles, as well as some GTA$, to help players jumping into the vast experience that is GTA Online for the first time. Over the years, constant DLC releases have bloated the content of the multiplayer mode severely, which might make the game less accessible to newcomers.
The starter pack doesn't just dump a bunch of in-game currency on the player, letting them do all the research into what's worth buying, what order to buy things in and so on, but unlocks a wide selection of items to give players something to start with. However, based on our overview, it isn't exactly a particularly useful cross-section of what GTA Online has to offer.
Many fans hoped that this version would include some kind of additional or exclusive content. Instead, it's simply a version of GTA 5 tailored for today's market — the game is still selling like crazy, and the majority of new players are buying it because of Online. With a starter pack making Online more accessible from the get-go, this seems like a great pack to entice new players.
Grand Theft Auto 5: Premium Online Edition is now available on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
