The GTA 6 Ultimate Edition does not unlock at once, and you can upgrade whenever
Twenty dollars buys items threaded through chapters you have not reached yet. Since the upgrade is sold separately at any time, the standard edition is the safer purchase.
The Ultimate Edition of Grand Theft Auto 6 costs $99.99 against $79.99 for the standard game, and the twenty dollars buys a list of vehicles, weapons, outfits and a salon. What almost nobody mentions is how any of it reaches you.
It does not arrive in a lump at midnight. Rockstar's own description is that the Ultimate Edition is “an exclusive collection of items threaded across all aspects of Jason and Lucia's story”, and threaded is doing real work in that sentence.
Content arrives as the story does
Reporting on the store listings describes the Ultimate content as becoming available as you progress through the story rather than unlocking at once, which matches Rockstar's own wording exactly.
That is a meaningfully different product from the one most people think they are buying. You are not getting a garage full of cars on launch night. You are getting a drip of items keyed to chapters you have not reached yet, and if you bounce off the game in week one you will never see most of it.
Whether that is good or bad depends entirely on how you play. Somebody finishing the story gets a steady trickle of things that arrive when they are contextually useful. Somebody who buys the expensive edition to start strong is buying the wrong edition.
You can upgrade later, and that changes the maths
This is the part that should decide it for most people. The store listings state that the Ultimate Edition Upgrade is available to standard edition owners to purchase separately at any time, including for physical buyers once their download code is redeemed.
So the twenty dollars is not a launch-night decision. You can buy the standard game, play it, and decide in December whether the extras are worth it, by which point you will know whether you are the kind of player who is going to reach the chapters they are threaded through.
There is no early-access component to the Ultimate Edition. Nobody who buys it plays sooner. Everyone unlocks at midnight in their own timezone, which is the one thing the expensive edition does not buy you.
The pre-order pack is separate, and it is the one with a deadline
The Vintage Vice City Pack is a pre-order bonus on both editions, not an Ultimate exclusive. It contains the '55 Vapid Stanier and a garage to keep it in, period outfits and hairstyles for both leads, a tropical weapon pattern, and one free month of GTA+.
That last item is strange enough to flag. Grand Theft Auto 6 ships without an online mode, and GTA+ is the subscription attached to Grand Theft Auto Online. A free month of it is either a membership you would spend in the old game, or a signal about what the subscription is going to become. Rockstar has not said which.
What is in the Ultimate Edition
| Item | What it is |
|---|---|
| '95 Grotti Cheetah | The headline car, a mid-nineties supercar |
| '67 Vapid Dominator Buggy | A cut-down muscle car with a weapon locker, at Paradise Garage |
| Vapid Ganado and Dinka Enduro | A coupe utility and a trail bike at Jason's safehouse |
| Shitzu Squalo | A speedboat with a weapons crate, at Washington Beach |
| Hawk & Little Morgan revolvers | Scoped and engraved, said to come from the Vercetti Estate |
| Signature sidearms | A named, engraved pistol each for Jason and Lucia |
| Sara's Salon content | Exclusive facial hair for Jason, makeup options for Lucia |
| The Wyman car collection | A classic car restoration commission |
One claim we are not printing
Several write-ups say the Ultimate Edition includes two exclusive side missions. The most detailed edition breakdowns list only one, the Wyman classic car commission, and Rockstar has not published a number.
So we are saying one, sourced, rather than two, repeated. If a second surfaces we will add it.
The short version
If you want the extras and you know you will finish the story, buy the Ultimate Edition. If you are not sure, buy the standard game, because the upgrade is available at any time and nothing in the expensive edition helps you on launch night.
And pre-order either one if you want the Stanier, because that pack is the only part of this with a real deadline attached.
Sources
Keep reading
GTA 6 standard or Ultimate: what the extra $20 actually buys
Ultimate is outselling standard in pre-orders, which is unusual. Here is everything in each edition, what the extras are worth, and who should ignore them.
3 min read
Every GTA 6 vehicle identified so far, and how sure anyone actually is
Ninety-two vehicles, split four ways by how firmly each one is known. Fourteen have names from Rockstar. None of them come from a leaked spreadsheet.
5 min read
The GTA 6 physical edition has no disc, and preloading starts 12 November
A box with a download code in it. Here is what that actually means for you, including the 150 to 200GB you need to clear.
2 min read