It's almost hard to believe that Grand Theft Auto VI is finally almost here after years of waiting. Even more surreal was seeing the first official gameplay reveal happen only three months before launch, which came with an inevitable update: GTA 6 will be locked to 30 FPS. YouTuber Davy Jones was invited by Rockstar North for a three-hour gameplay showcase where leadership confirmed the game does not target 60 FPS at launch.
Head of Development at Rockstar North, Rob Nelson, played the game for 2+ hours in front of Jones, who then detailed the experience on his Flow Games podcast. He said he could see the game running at 30 FPS during the demonstration, so he inquired about performance modes. Nelson replied that the game runs at 30 FPS for now, and that he'd need to "consult the technical team" for whether we'll see 60 FPS at launch "or later."
This has been the standard for Rockstar games for more than a decade at this point — release the game with a 30 FPS target in mind and update it later with a 60 FPS patch on more performant hardware. GTA V runs at 30 FPS on both the PS3 and PS4, but got updated to run at 60 FPS on the PS5. Red Dead Redemption 2 is unfortunately still stuck at 60 FPS on even current-gen consoles, however.
Following that track record, we likely won't see 60 FPS support on consoles till the PS7, while PC will enjoy unlocked frame rates once its port drops down the line. Digital Foundry expounded upon the 30 FPS limitation, theorizing that the high NPC density, dynamic weather, physics simulation, and advanced traffic AI will be too much for a console's CPU to handle. The GPU is not the bottleneck, because otherwise the PS5 Pro wouldn't have an issue pushing 60 FPS.
Nelson didn't confirm anything about performance modes either, which gives further credence to the PS5 Pro assumption. Rockstar also remained tight-lipped about what resolution we can expect across the different consoles; Digital Foundry says yesterday's presentation ran at upscaled 4K (from 1440p). The Xbox Series S is considerably slower than the base PS5 and Xbox Series X, while the PS5 Pro packs a lot more grunt, along with PSSR 2 for upscaling.
The same goes for other details like ray tracing, though it's widely speculated that GTA VI is relying on ray-traced reflections and lighting, which will likely improve in quality on the PS5 Pro, implying that Rockstar is prioritizing graphics over raw framerates. The gameplay released yesterday was captured on the base PS5. While the visual fidelity was on-point, keen-eyed viewers were able to notice the intense motion blur used in some scenes.
The car chase with the police particularly stands out because the fast-moving gameplay had visible smears and subtle streaking across different elements while the interwoven cutscenes did not. It seems like motion blur will be required to make the game feel smoother than it really is; besides, it can't be turned off on consoles anyway. Perhaps a 40 FPS mode could serve as a middle-ground tradeoff for 120 Hz VRR displays.