PS5 or Xbox Series X for GTA 6, and where Series S sits

Rockstar is shipping Grand Theft Auto 6 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5 Pro and Xbox Series X and S on 19 November. If you are buying a console for this game, the honest headline is that the version you play will look and run very similarly on the two flagship machines.

The performance answer is the same on both

GTA 6 is targeting 30 frames per second on consoles at launch, and Rockstar has not promised a 60fps performance mode on any of them. That reporting covers the PS5 Pro too.

This matters because it removes the usual reason to pick a side. There is no 60fps machine and a 30fps machine here. There is one target, and both boxes are expected to hit it. Our 30fps piece has the detail, and the Digital Foundry analysis covers what a console gives up to get there.

So the decision is not about frames. It is about money and storage.

Where they genuinely differ: the cost of space

This is the real separation, and it is not close.

A PlayStation 5 takes a standard M.2 NVMe drive from a competitive market of a dozen manufacturers. An Xbox Series X or S takes a proprietary Storage Expansion Card that only two companies make under licence. Same job, and the Xbox route costs meaningfully more per gigabyte because nothing is competing on price.

With a 200GB game arriving, that is not a footnote. Full detail on both, including the requirement most cheap PlayStation drives fail, is in the storage guide.

Where Series S sits, honestly

Series S is a confirmed platform, so this is not a question of whether it runs. It is the weakest of the four machines and it starts with the least room, which is a problem when the download is this size.

One thing that is often held against it does not apply here. Series S has no disc drive, and normally that rules out buying games in a box. For this release it makes no difference at all, because the physical edition holds a download code rather than a disc. Everybody is downloading.

If Series S is the console you own, play it there. If you are choosing a machine specifically for this game, it is not the one.

The PS5 Pro question

The Pro has more graphics headroom than a base PS5. What it does not appear to have is a promised 60fps mode in this game, and the reporting is explicit that the Pro is not exempt from the 30fps target.

Which makes the Pro a poor purchase to make *for* GTA 6. It may well hold a cleaner image, and image quality is a real thing to want. But if you are buying it expecting the frame rate to double, that is not what has been promised.

So which one

The one you already own. With a shared performance target and no exclusive content on either side, switching ecosystems for this game costs you your friends list and your library to gain almost nothing.

If you own neither and are buying in: PS5 is the cheaper machine to live with over the next few years, purely because expanding its storage costs less and will keep costing less.

Pre-order pricing and what separates the two editions is in the editions guide.