The Fall season is mere days away, which means GTA VI should launch around a year from now. Last we heard from Take-Two, Rockstar’s highly anticipated game is slated to launch in Fall 2025, contributing to what could be a stellar year for the publisher:
Our outlook reflects a narrowing of Rockstar Games’ previously established window of Calendar 2025 to Fall of Calendar 2025 for Grand Theft Auto VI. We are highly confident that Rockstar Games will deliver an unparalleled entertainment experience, and our expectations for the commercial impact of the title continue to increase. Looking ahead, we believe that our Company is poised to achieve new levels of success, and we expect to deliver sequential growth in Net Bookings for Fiscal 2025, 2026, and 2027.
GTA VI is, of course, the star of an amazing Take-Two lineup for 2025 that also includes the next mainline entries in the Civilization and Mafia franchises, not to mention Borderlands 4 and possibly even Judas, the long-awaited new game from Ken Levine. In this article, though, we’ll focus on why GTA VI is going to be absolutely critical not only for Rockstar and Take-Two but also for Sony, specifically with regard to the upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro console.
The anticipation for the next mainline installment in the Grand Theft Auto series can hardly be overstated. The previous entry, Grand Theft Auto V, can be considered the best-selling game of all time, with over 200 million units sold. Sure, technically Minecraft has sold even more, but there are numerous caveats: it launched two years before GTA V; it is cheaper; it is available on way more platforms, and it also targets a much broader audience that includes kids.
Rockstar Games has rightfully earned itself a massive fanbase thanks to masterpieces like GTA and Red Dead Redemption, and it’s been a long time since we got a game of theirs. GTA V originally launched in September 2013, and Red Dead Redemption 2 was released in October 2018. It was, therefore, not very surprising to see the first GTA VI trailer shattering YouTube records in terms of views.
If we take a moment to dive into why Rockstar’s titles are so popular, a big reason is that they move the needle forward when it comes to the open world genre. They’ve done that ever since Grand Theft Auto 3, which showed the way to the whole industry on what was possible with PlayStation 2 hardware, and the latest games are no different. Red Dead Redemption 2 itself is still unmatched in some areas, even when compared to more recent open world titles.
However, there’s a flip side. Rockstar’s games have historically struggled on the performance side precisely because the developer always attempts to cram as many technological advancements as possible onto the available hardware. Grand Theft Auto VI is unlikely to be different in this area.
As such, gamers will need the most powerful hardware to get the optimal experience when it comes to smoothness and definition. With Red Dead Redemption 2, the Xbox One X delivered that with a clear advantage in both rendering resolution and frame rate stability over the less powerful PS4 Pro. However, this time, Microsoft doesn’t seem interested in delivering a mid-generation console refresh, betting everything on the next generation instead (which they claim will offer the biggest performance leap ever).
With the PC version of GTA VI unlikely to materialize until at least a year and a half from the console debut, the best way to experience the story of Lucia and her partner will be on PlayStation 5 Pro. Even if it turns out to be true that Sony’s $700 console cannot deliver 60 frames per second, it will most likely offer a performance mode of around 40-45 FPS that takes advantage of variable refresh rate technology (VRR) to offer a far smoother experience than 30 FPS.
The PS5 Pro remains a niche console with its high pricing, but that niche will still spend what Sony is asking to get the best experience possible for the top games—starting with GTA VI. Sony is well aware of this and will likely push to make a Grand Theft Auto VI PS5 Pro bundle when the game finally launches next Fall.
