With over 40 million copies sold and with seven Guinness World Records under its belt (including one for being the fastest entertainment property to gross $1 billion) there’s no denying that Grand Theft Auto V is a popular game. The latest game in the crime sandbox series switches things up, allowing players to take control of three characters (Michael, Franklin and Trevor) instead of just the usual one and its world is also bigger than past Grand Theft Auto games combined.

It’s little wonder then that GTA V has been such a critical success on both PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as current gen (it was re-released for PS4 and Xbox One in November) with critics praising developer and publisher Rockstar Games‘ attention to detail and the fact that GTA V‘s fictional world of Los Santos was packed with things to do. What is a shame however, is that the well reviewed game has yet to be experienced by GTA fans on PC.

Given that the PC release of Grand Theft Auto IV was plagued with bugs, there was hope that not only would Rockstar provide a smooth PC release of GTA V but that they’d be ahead of the curve and would be able to to deliver the game on time. That doesn’t appear to be the case however as the game has now been pushed back from its original January 27th release date to March 24th instead.

Writing on the official Rockstar website, the GTA creator has said the following:

“Our apologies for the slight shift in the date but the game requires a few extra weeks of testing and polish to make it as good as can be. Moving a release date is never a decision we take lightly and is a choice we make only when we know it is in the best interests of the game and our fans. Thanks everyone for your understanding and we assure you these few extra weeks will be worth it when the game does arrive in March.”

The announcement comes after last week’s rumours that GTA V had been delayed on PC. Players were concerned that the game’s Steam listing had changed from January 27th to “coming soon” and then “early 2015″ but Rockstar assured fans that the game had not been delayed, saying that they had “not announced any changes to this date at this time”. The fact that Rockstar is going back on their words just a few days later is a concern to some players who feel as though the wool has been pulled over their eyes – after all, Rockstar surely must have been mulling this delay over when they addressed the rumours last week.

For others though, the delay is more than welcome. As mentioned, GTA IV suffered multiple issues on PC ranging from textures not loading, UI problems and in some severe cases the game would just fail to load. Meanwhile, Max Payne 3 players experienced all sorts of crashes, sluggish controller inputs and audio drops outs when that launched on PC. So for these reasons some fans are happy for Rockstar to push back the release of the game if it means that they can avoid such glitches.

To make sure that players are ready for GTA V‘s performance when it launches at the end of March, Rockstar has also released a list of minimum and recommended PC specs, as seen below:

Minimum specifications:
OS: Windows 8.1 64 Bit, Windows 8 64 Bit, Windows 7 64 Bit Service Pack 1, Windows Vista 64 Bit Service Pack 2* (*NVIDIA video card recommended if running Vista OS)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs) / AMD Phenom 9850 Quad-Core Processor (4 CPUs) @ 2.5GHz
Memory: 4GB
Video Card: NVIDIA 9800 GT 1GB / AMD HD 4870 1GB (DX 10, 10.1, 11)
Sound Card: 100% DirectX 10 compatible
HDD Space: 65GB
DVD Drive

Recommended specifications:
OS: Windows 8.1 64 Bit, Windows 8 64 Bit, Windows 7 64 Bit Service Pack 1
Processor: Intel Core i5 3470 @ 3.2GHZ (4 CPUs) / AMD X8 FX-8350 @ 4GHZ (8 CPUs)
Memory: 8GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB / AMD HD7870 2GB
Sound Card: 100% DirectX 10 compatible
HDD Space: 65GB
DVD Drive

Furthermore, PC players may also be delighted with the upgrades that Rockstar is adding to the new version of GTA V. Along with the Rockstar Editor “which gives players a full suite of editing tools to create and publish gameplay clips direct to both Social Club and YouTube”, the game also supports triple monitors and it has “even greater levels of detail” as it runs at 1080p HD at 60 FPS and it can go up to a 4K resolution. The screenshots in this post are examples of GTA V in 4K.

Rockstar also promises GTA Online Heists will be included in the PC version of the game. And as for GTA Online Heists on consoles, those “will be launching in the coming weeks ahead of the PC launch” so we’ll keep you posted on that.