Its baffles me how? 92 million and counting PS4s sold, and people still game on PS3 and on a game thats on PS4. Crazy.

Not everyone buys the next console.  There's good value to be had this way especially when money is tight.

It's not surprising, millions of ppl still play on PS3. Personally I won't be playing GTAV since I have the PC version with a few hundred ours of grind and nice car collection for races, but I occasionally play Dirt 2 (2009), it will soon be 10 years old and ppl still play it online on PS3, when I go online there's almost always at least a few ppl playing.

GTA 5 is a bit of a memory hog on PC, it really wants 8GB of memory. - Partly that is because of the reliance on the old Direct X 11 API and the extensive caching, you can get away with 4GB if you do some tweaking though.

In saying that though... Low PC still looks better than the last gen consoles, and even my 12+ year old Core 2 Quad rig is outputting better visuals than the PS3 and is actually looking closer to the Xbox One version... And even in some aspects, beats even that. Not a bad showing in my opinion.

I agree, would translate well over to the Switch, but it would probably take significant resources to pull off... And they might be investing that into their next title.

I don't think they would use a last-gen version of the build though, tons of patching and changes has occurred since then.

Wasn't the X360 running some modified version of DX9 with some features taken from 10 but not fully implemented, I mean... just in terms of being a old graphics API to say 11 is old while the 360 can only dream of being able to run it considering the console launched 1 full calendar year before DX10 showed its face on PC's.

No doubt a OC'd Core2Quad could piss all over PS/360 era games though when coupled with a decent enough GPU, again though, the first Core2Quads came to market a year after the X360 launched and yeah robbing this from wiki but "The mainstream 65 nanometer Core 2 Quad Q6600, clocked at 2.4 GHz, was launched on January 8, 2007 at US$851" sure that cpu can be gotten for around 20e now, but when it launched it would cost you the price of 3 Xbox360's for the CPU alone, it's no wonder it can outrun the old MS beast.

Looked it up for lol's, how the mighty have fallen (in price)

Yeah it was using a variant of Direct X 9. But it was cleaned up and streamlined as it didn't need to support/retain legacy ways of doing things.
Direct X 11 was a bit of a break-away, hence why it was a "separate" API to that of Direct X 9 and relied on the newer driver model... But there is still a substantial amount of legacy code in it for various reasons.

With that said however... The modified Direct X 9 API isn't the only API on the Xbox 360, that API is a high-level API... The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 also have low-level API's which operate closer to the metal for better performance which is what GTA 5 actually uses on console.

Today on PC we have Direct X 12 and Vulkan (Which was born from AMD's Mantle) which brings some aspects (That we get the most bang-for-buck performance gains from) closer to the metal for improved performance.

$851 was the launch price by the way... The PS3/Xbox 360 wasn't $300 on it's launch either remember... But a couple months after launch the Core 2 Quad had hundreds of dollars slashed from it's launch price.

In saying that though... Those Core 2 Quads can also play some games from today, you can't really say the same about the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.
I mean... Mine is mostly just used for Overwatch and other eSports titles, but I do use it for testing/tweaking of newer titles like Battlefield 5... That CPU is likely to outlast two console generations, that's not a bad effort.

Oh I wouldn't expect Rockstar themselves to divert resources from their next big game to handle it. They don't have to, there are tons of studios out there who can do Switch ports; Panic Button, Virtuos, Iron Galaxy...

PS3 wasn't priced as such and also it was laughed off the shelves for it, but the X360 could be gotten for 300 at launch "At launch, the Xbox 360 was available in two configurations: the "Xbox 360" package (unofficially known as the 20 GB Pro or Premium), priced at US$399 or GB£279.99, and the "Xbox 360 Core", priced at US$299 and GB£209.99."

Again though, that Core2Quad launched a year after the X360, so if it dropped months after the launch you are talking about going into mid 2007 or later which is going on 2 years after the launch of the X360 which came out in Nov 2005 and again... that $851 price tag... was just for the CPU, the GPU which would go along with that, not to mention motherboard, psu, ram and case are going to definitely add another 1-2 X360s worth of cost into the mix, sure that PC was then future proofed to be able to play games 2 generations from that point, but then it would still be cheaper to go and buy the most expensive version of the X360 back in Nov 2005 and to shell out for an X1 at launch.... and an X1X when that came out to play video games on, and I'm fairly certain the X1X would blow the C2Q and whatever GPU was around in 2005 out of the water today.

Just talking about that 851 cpu, couple it with a X800XL gpu from 2005 coming in at $278 you are already talking about enough money to nearly cover the costs of the X360 - X1 and X1X and I really doubt that GPU from 2005 would be capable of doing anything with Battlefield 5, what with 256mb of ddr2 video memory being a standard at the time on graphics cards it's unlikely to reach the min requirements.

Sure though, the CPU from last generation could be the heart of a computer today, but it wouldn't be coupled with other components from last gen.

Not sure about your line of "outlast 2 console generations" comes from, the Core2Quad launched during the X360 generation and is now absolutely at the end of it's life in the middle of the next generation. Realistically if playing games still on a Core2Quad based system is considered fine, then those people who still game on an X360 are happily fine with their consoles lasting the same length of time as both will offer the same visuals today as they did in 2005-6

And then we can start talking about the cost of online and so on which the cost will add up over a decade for the consoles.

That $851 was the launch price, just for the CPU. But ended up being half that price mere months later.
It's called the "Early adopters tax".

With that said... The Xbox 360 launched here in 2006, not 2005... And from memory was $500 for the Core, $650 for the Pro.

Eventually in 2008~ you could get Core 2 Quads for under $200 USD... And a year later you could get the Athlon 2 x4 for under $100 USD.

Anyone who bought an Xbox 360 on launch is not likely to have that same console today. They weren't exactly known for their reliability.

I for one had a launch Xbox 360 and binned it once the Slim consoles came around, that was an extra expensive.

Nah. You wouldn't have gotten an X800XL GPU, they weren't exactly the best choice of GPU IMHO.
I have certainly upgraded my GPU's every few years in my Core 2 rig, currently it's running a Geforce 1030. - But guess what? Online is free which more than covers that particular upgrade cost.

Everything from the CPU, motherboard, Ram, Drives, Power Supply are all original.
The only upgrade it has ever received has been low-end GPU's every few years which aren't overly expensive. (I.E. Radeon 240 before the Geforce 1030.)

The Core 2 Quad is going to be gaming longer than this console generation will last. Hence it will outlast 2 console generations in terms of total years.

The Xbox 360 doesn't get new AAA games... Hence why this PC is gaming "longer".

I hope so. It is a massive game and Switch owners would be missing out otherwise!

One of The best Games ever made,it sad that some people forgot how amazing it's because of GTA Online