14 DAY TRIAL // Grand Theft Auto 5 has been available for purchase for almost two weeks and, since its debut on September 17, it's broken sales records and managed to win over millions of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 owners from around the world.
While I'm sure that most of them are still exploring Los Santos and Blaine County during the main story missions or through the secondary quests, I'm even more confident that lots of players are currently awaiting next week's release of Grand Theft Auto Online, the dedicated multiplayer mode of the new game from Rockstar.
The studio has noticed this anticipation and has supplied fans with fresh and official details about the online experience, probably to counter the leaked info which appeared at the beginning of the week and hinted that the multiplayer would have a 32-player limit, instead of the official 16 one.
After learning about the activities that are possible in the online experience and hearing that Rockstar has quite a few free content updates already in the works, it's worth remembering that this will be the launch of an eagerly awaited mode for a game that has millions of players worldwide.
As such, no matter how much Rockstar is trying to increase its number of servers and the strength of its online infrastructure, expect at least in the first few days a few problems when trying to go online, to connect to the servers, or to join actual online worlds.
Companies, particularly video game ones, are quite bad at predicting demand for an online service, with one of the more recent examples being SimCity, as the online-only game from Electronic Arts encountered issues that affected the reputation of the game, that of developer Maxis, of publisher EA, and of service Origin.
I'm looking forward to GTA Online, but I'll probably wait a few days until jumping into the multiplayer experience, so that I can enjoy it as it was meant to be.