‘GTA V’ Heists Coming In First Post-PS4, Xbox One Release Update

Grand Theft Auto V owners have waited over a year for heists to arrive in GTA Online. Rockstar Games has the highly-anticipated mode waiting in the wings as part of the first update following GTA V‘s release on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One next week.

Rockstar Games slipped in the Heists announcement as part of a Rockstar Newswire post showing just how many players have played GTA V over the past year. No date for the 1.18 update was revealed, but we did get a confirmation that heists is first up to bat after next week’s release.

“We know you’re all excited for more Updates to come and we’ve got some really exciting stuff in the works to continue adding to, expanding and evolving the world of Grand Theft Auto Online — including the highly anticipated launch of Online Heists which will be available for all four consoles as the first GTA Online Update to happen after the game launches on PS4 and Xbox One. We’ll have some details on that very soon as well,” Rockstar Games announced.

Unfortunately, a previous statement from Rockstar suggests that the GTA Online 1.18 update will not be released until early next year. As Inquistir reported, the developer made the following statement previously.

“Expect big things in both Grand Theft Auto Online and Grand Theft Auto V next year including: GTA Online Heists.”

It’s not unsurprising that Rockstar Games will wait until early 2015 to release Heists. The post-Thanksgiving to New Year’s period is typically slow for games as studios take a much deserved break for the holidays. Still, it’s good to know that the first update of the year for GTA V will bring the long-awaited Heists. It also gives the developer time to get the PC version of the game out in January.

The player statistics for the first year of GTA V are of interest as well. Rockstar put together a nifty infographic showing nearly 34 million people have played 2.3 billion hours of the game. According to a Rockstar follow-up comment, there were some players from interesting locations as well.

“Our records show 7 GTA Online players in the Vatican City State, and 1 player in Antarctica who we are guessing is someone taking a break from work at the South Pole Research Station … to escape to Los Santos for a bit!”

No word on whether the Antartica console war winner is the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

Are you still anticipating the release of Heists for GTA V? Sound off in the comments below.

[Images via Rockstar Games]