It is essential to begin this article by emphasising that Rockstar Games has not yet confirmed performance targets for GTA VI; hence, this is merely speculation based on industry analysis. Despite the current generation of consoles seeing a near-industry-wide shift to shipping games with a 60 FPS mode, so far, everything points to GTA VI being locked at 30 FPS.
Industry experts (e.g., Digital Foundry) widely share the belief that Rockstar is targeting 30 FPS with GTA VI - although, as with this article, this is still based purely on speculation. The arguments they hold are compelling and, in our opinion, seem incredibly reasonable. In addition to the fact that both trailers are running at 30 FPS, the lengths Rockstar seems to be pushing the tech of current generation consoles, particularly in terms of their CPU, make reaching a consistent 60 FPS target seem unlikely.
As with previous Rockstar titles, GTA VI is most likely to be CPU-limited given the sheer scale of simulations that Rockstar will be attempting, making maintaining a smooth 60 FPS challenging within many of the more intensive scenes we've seen so far. For example, taking a look at the famous beach shot in Trailer 1, we count at least 85 NPCs in view (albeit with those further from the player lacking any animations). Whilst it isn't uncommon for developers to boost scenes like this for a trailer, hence this may not 100% resemble the game at launch, it's unlikely that Rockstar's final product will be cut back so significantly that the density of the scene becomes unrecognisable.
Running a scene as impressive as this, with the added stress of all sorts of potential chaos inflicted by players on top of it, will be incredibly, incredibly demanding on the CPU and would exceed anything achieved to date this generation. To put it mildly, the likelihood of Rockstar Games realising its ambition of producing a densely populated Vice City with high levels of interactivity, whilst maintaining its stunning graphics presentation with an impressive Ray Tracing (RT) feature set, all at a consistent 60 FPS, is fairly slim.
Would Rockstar Games target 60 FPS if they could?
Technically, there's no doubt that Rockstar could release some form of GTA VI at 60 FPS if they so desired - the trouble is that it would resemble a significantly downgraded product of what we have seen in trailers so far, with drastic reductions in RT effects and NPC density being likely necessities. The key question, therefore, lies within the artistic intent of Rockstar Games. How much of the full visual package that has been shown off in the trailers would they be willing to sacrifice to ship a serviceable performance mode?
In the case of GTA V Expanded & Enhanced, the primary difference between the graphics modes is the inclusion of RT shadows and reflections - whilst the latter is particularly noticeable if compared to the traditional screen space method, we'd suggest that most players are unlikely to be willing to drop from 60 to 30 FPS just for this feature. However, based on GTA VI's trailer, we can now expect a far more impressive suite of RT features, including Ray Traced Global Illumination (RTGI) and significantly more (and improved) RT reflections.
RT is practically everywhere you look and seems completely integral to Rockstar's artistic vision. It therefore becomes far harder to pare these features back or even strip them out entirely to meet a 60 FPS target without drastically changing the game's aesthetic. Even if they could, is it ultimately something they are willing to do? Similarly, how far would they be willing to compromise the dense, life-like crowds of NPCs to help ease performance on the CPU side? One slight caveat and dose of hope comes from the fact that the Xbox Series S is a launch platform - theoretically, could all of the cutbacks necessary to get VI running well on the Series S sufficiently translate to a watered-down mode capable of targeting 60 FPS on the more powerful consoles?
If, as we expect, GTA VI is to last multiple console generations, with next-gen not too long away, it is unsurprising that Rockstar would once more aim to push the current generation hardware to its limits before capitalising on the increased horsepower of future machines to deliver improved frame rates. GTA VI at 60 FPS becomes an extremely easy sell for a new-gen re-release...
Is 60 FPS possible on any console?
Leaks regarding 60 FPS being obtainable on the PS5 Pro have done the rounds, but are so far unfounded. In fact, given that the Pro shares the same CPU as the base PS5 with just a 10% overclock, if a 60 FPS mode were possible on the Pro, it wouldn't be illogical for it to also exist on the base model. We can't think of any major releases this generation that exclusively have a 60 FPS mode on PS5 Pro but not the base console, and it seems unlikely that Rockstar would want such a big disparity between its launch platforms, especially considering PS5 Pro has the smallest player base by some margin.
This isn't to say the Pro will offer no meaningful improvements to the base version; instead, it is almost certain that Rockstar will capitalise upon the Pro's improved RT capabilities as well as its impressive AI upscaler, PSSR2, to produce the highest fidelity version of the game across all consoles. There's no doubt that the Pro will offer the optimal platform to play GTA VI at launch.
That being said, if your sole motivation for buying a Pro is to experience GTA VI at higher frame rates, rather than improved image quality, we wouldn't recommend it - you'll be better off waiting for official confirmation regarding performance targets to help guide that decision.
If 60 FPS is out of the picture, an ideal middle ground would be a 40 FPS performance mode for users with 120 Hz displays. If you have yet to try a game at 40 FPS, don't be put off by the increase of just 10 frames per second - more importantly, the frame time of a 40 FPS mode lies exactly in the middle of 30 and 60 FPS, offering a far smoother experience than 30 FPS.
Does any of this even matter?
One look at the comments of any social media posts discussing the possibility of GTA VI only hitting 30 FPS would imply that this is a really big deal that is likely to be off-putting for a lot of players, but is that really the case? We asked our audience for their opinions, running a poll across our Twitter and Instagram with the following question:
If GTA VI only launches with 30 FPS will it bother you?
- Yes - But I'll still play
- Yes - Means I won't play
- No
The results were resounding. The majority of respondents stated that GTA VI launching at 30 FPS would bother them, but not enough to stop them from playing, followed by a reasonable proportion of players that were entirely unbothered, and finally a tiny minority that wouldn't play because of it.
If GTA VI does launch only at 30 FPS, we expect some grumbling but no widespread reductions in game sales because of it.
Given the size of the expected GTA VI player base, there is likely simply a large proportion that will be entirely indifferent to the topics discussed within this article - perhaps many that have never even given any thought to the frame rate of their games. Indeed, one of the most common comments we received was from players stating that they don't pay attention to frame rates so they wouldn't care.
All previous Rockstar titles have launched at 30 FPS and, as we know, have been widely well-received. To this day, console players have not even experienced Red Dead Redemption II above 30 FPS (and don't get us started about this!). Rockstar's solid frame pacing and well-implemented motion blur make this experience on console still extremely enjoyable.
Only time will tell to see what Rockstar has managed to pull off - if there's any studio that would be capable of the wizardry required to get VI running at 60 FPS, it's them. We would absolutely love every single prediction in this article to be wrong and to find ourselves hurtling around the streets of Vice City at a smooth 60 FPS across all consoles in 6 months' time... let's wait and see...