As anticipation builds around Rockstar’s next open-world title, early positioning has already begun. Pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI went live roughly a week ago, accompanied by an official statement that the game plays “best on the PS5.” Rockstar Games has since shared several details about the standard PS5 and PS5 Pro versions, though the studio has stopped short of disclosing any concrete performance targets.
What the trailers suggest about frame rates
While the developer remains quiet on frame rate specifics, a new technical assessment from Digital Foundry suggests that hopes for a 60 FPS mode may need to be tempered. The analysis follows a leak from last month that claimed GTA VI would ship with both Quality and Performance modes, with the Performance preset supposedly aiming for 60 FPS at the cost of visual fidelity. Digital Foundry, however, considers such a target unlikely based on everything Rockstar has shown so far across trailers and screenshots. The outlet notes that while multiple graphics modes are common in modern releases, that does not guarantee one of them will target 60 FPS. GTA VI could instead present different visual presets locked at 30 FPS, or potentially introduce a 40 FPS option for compatible displays.
Processing power, not pixel count, is the bottleneck
The core hurdle, according to the report, is not graphics throughput but CPU load. Grand Theft Auto VI promises a densely simulated open world packed with NPCs, traffic systems, real-time physics, and layered environmental detail. Those systems weigh heavily on processors, and the demands escalate when players traverse the map at high speed by car, boat, or aircraft. Digital Foundry draws parallels to recent simulation-heavy titles such as Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3, where bustling areas already push modern hardware hard. GTA VI appears to operate on an even larger scale, making a stable 60 FPS considerably harder to lock down.
Rockstar’s historical priorities and the PS5 Pro factor
The analysis also points to precedent. GTA IV, GTA V, and Red Dead Redemption 2 all launched on consoles with a 30 FPS baseline. Although GTA V later received a 60 FPS update on newer hardware, Rockstar has traditionally leaned toward richer visuals and deeper world simulation over higher frame rates at a new game’s debut. Even the PS5 Pro, which may seem like the natural candidate for unlocking extra performance, is unlikely to break that pattern. The console delivers a more capable GPU, improved ray tracing acceleration, and support for PSSR upscaling, but its CPU is only marginally quicker than the one inside the standard PS5. Because GTA VI is expected to be heavily CPU-bound, Digital Foundry argues that those graphics-side gains alone will probably not propel the game to 60 FPS. A 40 FPS experience is described as a much more realistic target for the Pro hardware.
Source: www.digitalfoundry.net