Yes, I'd pre-order GTA 6. The problem is I need to buy a PlayStation 5 as well. GTA 6 launches on 19 November 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S only, pre-orders have been open since June at $79.99 for the Standard Edition, and there's still no official PC date. So for me the real question isn't whether I buy GTA 6 , it's how much I can pick up a PS5 for.
The one thing I want from it is performance. If GTA 6 comes out and I'm spending most of my time on loading screens again, the way I did in GTA 5, I would be pissed.
When Does GTA 6 Come Out?
GTA 6 comes out on Thursday, 19 November 2026, on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. That date is confirmed on the Xbox Store listing, and Rockstar restated it in the launch trailer released on 15 October, as Kotaku reported.
The game has been delayed twice:
- The first trailer in December 2023 targeted a 2025 release.
- In May 2025, that shifted to 26 May 2026, per Tom's Guide.
- In November 2025, it moved again to 19 November 2026, per TechRadar.
There is no official PC release date. VGC reports a PC version is reportedly coming before the end of March 2027, but Rockstar hasn't confirmed it.
How Much Is a GTA 6 Pre-Order?
Pre-orders opened on 25 June 2026. The Standard Edition costs $79.99 / £69.99 and the Ultimate Edition costs $99.99 / £89.99. Here's what VideoGamer's pre-order guide lists:
| Standard | Ultimate | |
|---|---|---|
| US price | $79.99 | $99.99 |
| UK price | £69.99 | £89.99 |
| Pre-order bonus | Vintage Vice City Pack (bought before 20 November) | Vintage Vice City Pack (bought before 20 November) |
| Digital pre-order | One month of GTA+ | One month of GTA+ |
Preloading starts on 12 November, a week before launch. Physical copies come with a download code rather than the game on a disc.
How Much Is a PS5 for GTA 6?
A PS5 currently costs $649.99 in the US and £569.99 in the UK, following Sony's latest price rise on 2 April 2026. The PlayStation Blog's price post lists all current models:
| Model | US | UK |
|---|---|---|
| PS5 | $649.99 | £569.99 |
| PS5 Digital Edition | $599.99 | £519.99 |
| PS5 Pro | $899.99 | £789.99 |
There is no official GTA 6 PS5 bundle. Sony has announced a cheaper Midnight Black PS5 to launch alongside GTA 6, but as GamesRadar points out, it's Japan-only for now.
I'll probably have to buy a PS5, and that's purely because I'm a streamer. I don't think I could get away with not covering GTA 6 , it'd be a massive gap for my stream and for my writing here. So it might be worth it, depending on how much I can pick up a PS5 for.
What Do I Want From GTA 6?
Mainly, better performance. My memories of GTA 5 when it came out are going to someone's apartment, loading for a billion years to start the job, doing the first part of the job, then loading for another billion years waiting for someone to join, and then loading for another billion years every time you failed. That's actually what drove me to stop playing GTA last time.
I wasn't the only one. In 2021, a player called t0stworked out why GTA Online took so long to load: a single-threaded bit of code was chewing through one big file, and fixing it cut his load time from about six minutes to under two , a 69.4% reduction. Rockstar confirmed the fix and paid him a $10,000 bug bounty, per Game Developer.
For GTA 6, Sony and Rockstar are promising "near-instant load times" from the PS5's SSD, in a PlayStation Blog post from June. Nobody has published actual load-time numbers yet.
I didn't feel quite so bad going back to GTA 5 recently , it's been ages since it released. But if GTA 6 has me sitting through loading screens like that again, I'll be pissed.
Does the GTA 6 Story Matter?
Not really, at least not to me. As long as there's a lot of stuff to do in an open sandbox, I don't care about the story. I've got a terrible memory, so I mostly don't even remember who the characters are while I'm playing.
That's worth knowing about the launch, too: the store listing describes GTA 6 as "a single-player experience", and Rockstar hasn't given a date for GTA 6's online mode. So day one is the story and the open world , whatever comes after that comes later.
Why Does My Steam Account Only Show 93 Hours of GTA 5?
My Steam account shows 93 hours of GTA 5, but I've got a lot more than that. I played it heaps when it first came out and only recently went back to it on Steam.
GTA 5 launched on PS3 and Xbox 360 on 17 September 2013, the PS4 and Xbox One versions followed in November 2014, and the PC version didn't arrive until 14 April 2015 , after two delays , per PC Gamer. It's also been sold through the Rockstar Games Launcher, and the Epic Games Store gave it away free in May 2020, so plenty of people's GTA 5 hours sit outside Steam entirely.
You can find more on the game on games.gg's GTA 6 page.
