2026’s Most Anticipated Game Is Making Questionable Choices

After almost a decade in the making, Grand Theft Auto 6 is months away from being released. GTA 6 promises to be the most immersive, and largest, entry in the series yet. However, Rockstar is making a number of decisions about the release that are difficult to explain in any way other than the company wanting to suck as much money out of the game as possible.

GTA 6 is set to release on November 19, 2026, but only on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. Pre-orders are currently open with two versions of the game available: standard and ultimate. Releasing multiple editions for a game is commonplace in the industry, but there are elements that start to become problematic depending on what’s included in each edition.

This upcoming GTA release has brought a lot of hype to players, but it’s also showcased the unfortunate trends consuming the industry. And yet, there’s no scenario where GTA 6 doesn’t become a massive hit, more than making up its development costs despite the flaws of its release.

Standard and Ultimate GTA 6 Editions

If you want the standard experience, you’ll miss out on a number of in-game stores, vehicles, and cosmetic options while still paying $80. The problem is that you’ll also lose access to side missions and entire locations, which when added to the total list of what the standard edition doesn’t have, leaves players feeling like they have to spend $100 on the ultimate edition just to get the full game.

This is an industry problem. Games have been including extra in-game content in more expensive editions, which leads to the lower-price versions feeling like they don’t give you the full game. You get a partial experience. When you buy a game, you should receive the entirety of the main game regardless of the edition. More expensive editions should only include additional content and cosmetic options that don’t impact the main game.

Instead, players are sharing across communities that they feel like there’s a paywall for GTA with this structure. It’s particularly frustrating when the average price of a AAA game has gone from $60 to $80, and now that $80 doesn’t buy you the full game.

But Will GTA 6 Run Well?

Interestingly, we haven’t seen any gameplay footage. So far, the trailers are all cinematic footage, even though the release date is just months away. The truth is that the best performance of the game is going to be from a high-end PC, but there’s no PC release date right now. Only Xbox and PlayStation are getting GTA 6 in November.

This has led to a debate over whether the game will be able to run 60 FPS on either console, and Digital Foundry has an article that points out how unlikely 60 FPS is when you look at past Rockstar games. Historically, Rockstar games have released at 30 FPS on consoles, which was the case for GTA 4, GTA 5, and Red Dead Redemption 2. Even then, if you played any of those titles on consoles at the time, you’d experience FPS drops.

That leads to the conclusion that you’ll be paying for a game that’s unlikely to perform at the level that trailers show, at least not on current-gen consoles. However, it’s difficult to say with certainty what performance will look like without additional information from Rockstar, and this is currently speculation based on past games from the company.

GTA 6 was always going to sell well, which is why the higher price feels unnecessary. Plus, players will likely buy the PC version in the future even if they have the console version. But those are the reasons that Rockstar’s choices feel questionable and overall greedy. Otherwise, content wouldn’t be paywalled in a more expensive game, the PC version would at least have a release window, and we’d have some real information about how the game will perform on the consoles receiving it.

(featured image: Rockstar)

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