Ahead of the scheduled The Kortz Center Heist update for Grand Theft Auto Online in July as well as the upcoming long-awaited release of Grand Theft Auto 6 (GTA 6) on November 19 (preorders go live next week), developer Rockstar Games has made players a sweet new offer for its predecessor GTA 5.

In a recent blog post, the studio announced that from today onwards, those who own the Xbox One, PS4, or "Legacy" (PC) version of GTA 5 will be able to upgrade to the next-gen Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and "Enhanced" (PC) editions for free by downloading them from their platform's storefront. The upgrade includes the full package, meaning access to both GTA 5 Story Mode as well as GTA Online.

The native Xbox Series X|S and PS5 versions — and GTA 5 Enhanced on PC — sport "vast technical improvements, easy migration of your Story Mode and Online progress, and new features including Hao’s Special Works high-performance vehicles and upgrades, Career Progress rewards, and much more."

Essentially, existing GTA 5 owners will get a new version of both Story Mode and Online with better visuals and performance along with some nifty gameplay upgrades, with full support for profile and progress migration on consoles and PC. However, for Xbox players specifically, I have bad news: there's a big catch.

While folks who own a physical PS4 copy of GTA 5 can download the next-gen PS5 version free-of-charge as long as they have the disc in their console, the same option isn't available to disc owners that play on Xbox. If you have a physical Xbox version of the game, it won't allow you to download the Xbox Series X|S edition of GTA 5 for free.

Rockstar has addressed this in a FAQ for the offered upgrade, stating that "Physical disc owners cannot upgrade to a digital version due to limitations of the platform." No details were provided beyond that, though, so I'm not sure what those limitations are, and ultimately, it's unclear right now.

I've reached out to Microsoft and Xbox for comment, and will update this article if I glean more information about whatever's preventing owners of physical GTA 5 Xbox copies from accessing the digital next-gen version of the title.

Ultimately, it's a frustrating situation for many Xbox gamers, as there's undoubtedly a significant portion of the community that owns a physical copy of GTA 5 and would like to be able to get the next-gen version digitally without having to spend money on it. It also represents the value of Microsoft's Smart Delivery system for automatic cross-gen Xbox game upgrades — and highlights how irksome it is when developers and games don't support it.

In the end, I hope Microsoft and Rockstar are able to work something out here so that those who own physical Xbox copies of GTA 5 aren't left behind with these free upgrades. I'm not exactly holding my breath, though.

Would you be willing to pay for GTA 5 on Xbox again in order to access the next-gen Xbox Series X|S version? Let me know in the comments, and in our poll.

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Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he's been an avid fan since childhood. He's been writing for Team WC since the summer of 2017, and you'll find him doing news, editorials, reviews, and general coverage on everything gaming, Xbox, and Windows PC. His favorite game of all time is probably NieR: Automata, though Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Team Fortress 2 are in the running, too. When he's not writing or gaming, there's a good chance he's either watching an interesting new movie or TV show or actually going outside for once. Follow him on X (Twitter).