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GTA Online for GTA V will launch today at 12pm UK time

Rockstar Games will roll out GTA Online, the online multiplayer aspect of its billion dollar-selling GTA V title, at 12pm UK time today.

The game, which was released on September 17th, took just three days to amass $1 billion in sales – in comparison, James Cameron’s Avatar took three weeks to hit the billion dollar mark. Rockstar has been holding back the online multiplayer aspect it promised earlier in the year and today it will finally arrive on PS3 and Xbox 360 as an update. Two weeks later might not seem like much for some, but we know that thousands have already completed the single player story mode.

Those on Xbox LIVE and the PlayStation Network will receive a small downloadable update for the game today which will bring a whole new online aspect to the currently single player only game. Xbox 360 gamers will of course need an Xbox LIVE Gold subscription to play.

Currently the game loads directly into your single player campaign and this will be the same even with GTA Online downloaded. To jump into an alternate online universe, a fourth character slot can be selected in the single player game – players can select this option just as they would do when switching to Franklin, Michael or Trevor.

Unlike previous GTA titles, the multiplayer aspect isn’t just a free-for-all set in the same city. Whilst it will be based in Los Santos and San Andreas, GTA Online is a story set a few months prior to the single player story. Players start by creating their own character and then choosing a mother and a father, of which they can choose to have a genetic dominance based on either parent or just a mix of both. Each player also gets to define their character’s lifestyle by choosing their activities, how much sleep they get and whether they prefer to partake in illicit activities or legitimate jobs.

Players can invite friends to their properties in the game via friendly ‘house party’ invitations and Rockstar trusts that players won’t be able to rock up and shoot the place down in order to loot money and vehicles.

Within GTA Online players can own a single property as their safe house, join a crew and compete in races or complete missions in order to gain reputation points and money, which in turn unlock weapons, vehicles and clothes. When you jump into the online game you will be put into a lobby of up to 16 players, though Rockstar has already noted that there may be teething issues to begin with due to the millions of players expected to jump into the new online world at once. The developer has been trying to add enough servers to deal with the demand ahead of the launch, so we’re hoping that everything is now in place to cope.

GTA Online will also include in-game micro transactions where players can trade real money for in-game moolah. Recently the various in-game purchases have been leaked, with different cards offering up to 100,000 GTA$. Rockstar promises that players buying these cash cards won’t gain an unfair advantage over those who don’t, though the in-game cash will allow them to purchase vehicles, clothes and other smaller mods.

After GTA Online the next step for Rockstar will be adding a Content Creator tool in the next few months. This will allow gamers to create their own Jobs from scratch, including races (with boats and all sorts of other cool stuff) and deathmatches.

GTA Online launches on Xbox 360 and PS3 at 12pm UK time today.