Grand Theft Auto VI is going to need a lot of room. The standard edition is a 210GB download on PS5, according to PlayStation Game Size, an X account that tracks data from the PlayStation Store’s backend, and Insider Gaming says it can back the number up. Big games have passed 100GB for years. This one is harder to plan around, because the boxed version holds a download code instead of a disc, so every player faces the full GTA 6 download size.
The listing surfaced on 27 October and covers the $79.99 standard edition. It shows preloading from 12 November and a midnight release on 19 November, matching the dates Rockstar announced in June. It gives no size for the $99.99 Ultimate Edition or for Xbox Series X|S, and Rockstar hasn’t published a storage figure of its own so far.
The 210GB is also a download size rather than a final install size, and it doesn’t include a day-one patch. As Engadget pointed out, Insider Gaming warns that a patch could push the first-day download higher still.
The box in the shop is a download too
Rockstar settled the disc question back in June. When pre-orders opened, its official announcement said the physical version would contain “a download code inside the box” and would go on sale on 12 November “to support pre-loading.” In practice the boxed copy is a voucher. Buying GTA 6 in a shop puts you in the same 210GB queue as buying it on the PlayStation Store, and the box mostly gives you something to put on a shelf. It does at least keep box buyers on the same schedule, since the code in the case works from the first day of preloading. On the Xbox Series S, which has no disc drive, a code was always the only option. We’ve gone through everything Rockstar has said about a GTA 6 disc version before, and nothing since has changed that picture.
Part of the reason is arithmetic. A PS5 disc holds up to 100GB, so a game this size would have needed at least three of them, with a patch on top. Rockstar never gave its own reason for dropping the disc. VGC noted an earlier report that the decision was partly about preventing leaks before launch, and Take-Two has denied planning a disc release later.
Even so, 210GB isn’t a record. Several Call of Duty games and ARK: Survival Evolved take more space once their extra content is counted, as Kotaku points out. Against Rockstar’s own catalogue the jump is easier to see. The current-generation version of GTA V is about 87GB on PS5, and Red Dead Redemption 2 lists 105GB, according to Forbes’ preload guide. That makes GTA 6 twice the size of Rockstar’s last open world, which fits what we know about its scale. Our earlier look at how big the GTA 6 map could be suggested Leonida could rival GTA 4, GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 put together, and every street of that has to live somewhere on your drive.
What 210GB means for your console
Storage is where this bites, and Xbox Series S owners have the least room. The 512GB Series S leaves about 364GB for games, so GTA 6 alone would take nearly 58% of it. On a launch PS5, with about 667GB usable, it fills almost a third of the drive. A 1TB Xbox Series X has about 802GB to work with, so the game takes roughly a quarter, and most players will have to delete something first. PS5 Pro owners, with close to 1.9TB usable according to Forbes, are the only ones who can treat it as just another install.
At a steady 100Mbps, 210GB takes about four hours and 40 minutes to download. At 50Mbps that becomes more than nine hours, and at 25Mbps it’s close to 19 hours. Real download speeds are rarely that steady, least of all in a launch week when millions of consoles are pulling the same files. That makes Rockstar’s decision to open preloads a full week early the most player-friendly part of this launch. Anyone who starts on 12 November should be ready to play the moment the game unlocks. If the store listings hold, New Zealand unlocks first, at 11:00 UTC on 18 November, about 18 hours before players on the US east coast.
The number will also grow after launch. Kotaku notes that the 210GB doesn’t cover a day-one patch, future updates or the new version of GTA Online, which Rockstar hasn’t shown yet. GTA V has been updated for more than a decade, and there’s little reason to expect its successor to stay the same size.
Clear around 250GB before 12 November rather than exactly 210GB, because consoles need working space to install and patch. If your console is already full, both platforms take extra storage: the PS5 accepts M.2 SSDs from 250GB to 8TB, and the Xbox Series consoles use their own expansion cards. We’ll update this story when preloading opens and the final sizes for both consoles appear.
