Will GTA 6 Look Even Better on PS5 Pro?

Did you watch the new GTA 6 trailer and think, ‘Wow, the bubbles inside that bottle of beer look really, really good?’ You’re not alone. Hundreds of millions of viewers have now watched the second Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer and marveled at the technical brilliance on display. And knowing that the trailer footage was all captured on PS5 is just mind-blowing. But are we being set up to be fooled?

IGN spoke to Digital Foundry’s Alexander Battaglia to help break down what we saw and understand whether there are any takeaways we can glean from the newest GTA 6 trailer and how it might translate into actual gameplay experience on console. And it turns out, we can.

“The trailer is running at 30 fps and is completely made up of — presumably — real-time cutscenes and not gameplay — hence the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen,” Battaglia says. “I imagine the game’s primary target for such cutscenes is 30 fps, and it’s likely the same for gameplay.”

30 fps on PS5 and Xbox Series X is nothing new. Games often come with either a fidelity mode, which prioritizes up to 4K resolution at 30 fps, or a performance mode, which targets 60 fps at lower resolution. But with the launch of the PS5 Pro, Sony has made efforts to bridge the two modes, and it’s something Battaglia says we’ll likely see pushed closer to the game’s release.

“Given the image quality in the trailer, which may well be a use of FSR1 (AMD’s AI performance enhancing tool and the basis of PS5 Pro’s PSSR) from a low internal resolution, PS5 Pro could enhance image quality through the use of PSSR making a less aliased, more detailed image with less blur.”

Personally speaking, I tend to always opt for performance mode over fidelity mode, but one of the key selling points for PS5 Pro is that you don’t have to make that choice, you can have both. So while Digital Foundry thinks PS5 Pro can improve image quality, the big question is: Will GTA 6 run at 60 fps on console?

On the Digital Foundry tech breakdown posted on YouTube, the panel seems to agree that GTA 6 will not be able to hit 60 fps on console. “As soon as you have RTGI [Ray Traced Global Illumination], a massive open world, those things tend not to run well at 60 fps… I think everything points to this being a 30 fps game, maybe with a 40 fps mode on some [consoles].”

At the heart of the matter is ray tracing, which Digital Foundry says seems integral to GTA 6, not just from a tech perspective but an artistic one. “You can’t get rid of RTGI. It’s inherent to the way the game works. And they’re throughout the trailer, so they obviously made them a part of the gameplay.”

Leonida, Rockstar’s version of the Sunshine State, is full of light. Whether it’s from the sun itself beaming on bright beaches and suntanned bodies, or the neon lights illuminating Vice City’s nightlife, ray tracing feels core to GTA 6’s art direction, and also why it likely won’t run higher than 30 fps. It could also be where PS5 Pro players find the most joy over their PS5 and Xbox Series X counterparts: “The trailer uses ray tracing extensively, which could be further enhanced on PS5 Pro,” Battaglia says.

While the ray tracing improvements on PS5 Pro are speculative, you only have to compare the new GTA 6 trailer with the first one to see that Rockstar is hammering the importance of RTGI to the look of GTA 6. “Real-time ray-traced transparency reflections are much more obvious in this trailer, so glass on beer bottles, cars’ windscreens, building windows, and more look particularly good.” The bubbly beer that hundreds of millions of GTA fans are obsessing over is why GTA 6 might not run at 60 fps, but also why GTA 6 might look even better on PS5 Pro.

While 30 fps seems to be the default across consoles, PS5 Pro’s better ray tracing capabilities mean this key GTA 6 feature should get a better showcase on Sony’s more powerful console. To date, the improvements PS5 Pro offers over the base console varies wildly from one game to the next, with Assassin’s Creed Shadows currently the best showcase for what the console can do. But I’m hoping Rockstar and GTA 6 take it a step further and make the difference even more noticeable.

At the opposite end of the powerhouse scale is the Xbox Series S, which is currently the weakest console that can play GTA 6 (there’s no word yet on whether Rockstar will bring GTA 6 to Switch 2). Digital Foundry says that to get GTA 6 on the Series S, Rockstar may need to sacrifice ray tracing completely to run the game at 30 fps, with sub-1080p resolution. But the Series S still has the same ballpark CPU power and storage as Series X, so it’s not impossible.

There’s still a whole year until GTA 6 hits shelves (sadly), and with only two trailers released so far, there are still a lot of unknown variables. But even the changes from the first GTA 6 trailer to the newest one reveals loads of interesting technical details, from a constant 30 fps captured on PS5 to the improved ray tracing. And with history telling us that Rockstar typically only releases 30 fps GTA games, all signs are pointing to the same for GTA 6 – although if the trailers are anything to go by, the series has never looked better.