The GTA 6 extended look by Rockstar, which was aired on Netflix on August 27, was the moment the world had their closest look at Vice City. The quality of lighting, number of people and objects on-screen, everything seemed cutting-edge in an uncommon manner for any video game. However, hidden behind the hype there is a technological issue that no visuals in the world can help solve – GTA 6 is supposed to have a frame rate of just 30 FPS on the base PlayStation 5, and the reason for this is quite specific.
Also read: GTA 6 extended look premiers on Netflix and it takes us to Vice City one more time
The last generation saw every single full title by Rockstar shipped with the game locked at 30 FPS on consoles: GTA IV, GTA V, Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption 2, L.A. Noire. There’s a reason for this and laziness isn’t among them. The open world of Rockstar games was and always has been based on how much of what happens behind the scenes is simulated in addition to what is rendered. Traffic AI, pedestrian behavior, physics interaction, weather systems – everything like this happens on the CPU and in real-time regardless of whether the camera actually sees what is going on there.
The density of simulation in GTA 6 is said to be taking things even further than Rockstar games before, creating one of the most densely simulated city environments in gaming history on a console. Neither the Netflix unveiling nor Rockstar itself released any specifications on this game yet, but based on what we have seen until now, 30 frames per second seems to be the baseline that the game will run at on base PS5, with the CPU as the bottleneck. The exact resolution and Raytracing settings of the finished game are not specified yet. The resolution and graphics effects can be changed at will by Rockstar to achieve higher frame rate targets. However, the amount of CPU processing power required to simulate all those hundreds of NPCs in action cannot be changed that easily.
Also read: No Netflix? GTA 6 Extended Look is now available to watch for free on YouTube
The processor of the PS5 is an 8-core Zen 2 processor. It was fairly good for its time when the console was released in 2020, but compared to 2026’s standards, powering through all the background simulations in this particular game will definitely put more strain on this particular hardware element. The doubling of the frame rate from 30 FPS to 60 FPS does not only double the frames rendered per second, but it also doubles the calculations made on the simulated world.
This is what makes the whole thing exciting for those looking to a solution through the implementation of a stronger console. With the PS5 Pro getting a huge boost in the GPU department with around 67 percent more compute units, the CPU clock speed increase will only be around 10 percent higher compared to the base PS5. As the bottleneck of GTA 6 is purely in the CPU sector, that could very well be insufficient for enabling the game to run at 60 FPS.
Some leaks claim that a PS5 Pro firmware update for unlocking the 60 FPS mode in GTA 6 will come right before the release of the title on 19th November, 2026 and will be created in cooperation with Sony engineers. The leakers say that the performance can vary somewhere from 40 FPS to 60 FPS on the Pro hardware. None of this has been confirmed by Rockstar or Sony so far.
What seems like a sure thing is that a 60 FPS mode on the base PS5 hardware will be hard to achieve. This has nothing to do with pixels. This is about the whole simulation that takes place in Vice City out of sight of the player.
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