In a press release coinciding with Grand Theft Auto VI becoming available for pre-load ahead of its November 19th release date, Rockstar has confirmed that the game “has been fully developed from the ground up to provide the best possible experience for the current generation of consoles, targeting 30 frames per second while pushing both platforms to their absolute limits.” Read between the lines, and you can kind of make out the words “…so hope your PCs are up to spec, computer nerds.”
GTA 6, of course, still does not have a confirmed PC version, even if Rockstar’s former tech director says it’s probably not far off. And despite this, even ancient, last-gen consoles are getting in on it, as the release also unexpectedly confirms that the game will be playable on Xbox One via Xbox Cloud Gaming, Microsoft’s game streaming service that has suddenly lost its ability to work on PC. Granted, this comes with a warning: “as with all cloud streaming, connection speeds and other technical factors may influence game performance in ways that would not impact local gameplay.” If you ended up getting a PS4 last generation, no cloud play for you either, I’m afraid. It also states that it will “play best on Playstation 5 consoles”, making great use of that Sony partnership, and will include Playstation Spectral Super Resolution and ray-traced shadows on PS5 Pro.
A 2026 current-gen game targeting 30fps, let alone one as titanic of a release as GTA VI, is probably not going to go down well with a lot of people, even if console players are traditionally les sensitive about FPS counts than PC players. What this does imply, though, is that the inevitable PC release might be an even more demanding behemoth than expected, if Xbox Series and PS5 versions can’t even target 60fps. The availability of the game on Xbox One, even if just through cloud streaming, could have resulted in an acceptance that 60fps just wasn’t going to be possible if it was also going to be able to ‘run’ on last-gen hardware. Either way, when it does eventually escape console exclusivity, hopefully trying to run GTA VI on anything less than an RTX 5080 won’t set your PC on fire. Now, let me just quickly have a glance at GPU prices. Oh, no.
