The new GTA 6 trailer draws on base PS5 footage

The new Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer is graphically impressive in a way videogame trailers generally aren't anymore. That's to be expected: Rockstar has more resources than any other studio in the world, and nowadays, the graphics arms race favours studios with loads of money, time, and talent at their disposal rather than just, say, one smart programmer. As a result, finer details that other studios don't have time to make sing—such as beer bottles—really stand out. The culmination of all these touches makes the GTA 6 trailer look decidedly next-gen, but actually, it's running on a base PS5.

"Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 2 was captured entirely in-game from a PlayStation 5, comprised of equal parts gameplay and cutscenes," Rockstar Games posted on X earlier today.

GTA 6 is only confirmed for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X at this point, so it's probably no surprise that the footage is derived from what will be the lead platform. Still, I half-expected the footage to be running on a PS5 Pro. Or even a PC, even though the PC version doesn't exist as far as Rockstar is concerned.

It's worth remembering that GTA 5 first launched for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2013. That's kind of shocking in retrospect, but the game was perfectly playable on those antiquated consoles, and the inevitable next-gen versions for Xbox One and PS4 weren't seismic improvements. The game's PC launch was different, though: not only did it finally support framerates higher than an occasionally ropey 30 fps, but we also got higher resolution, an in-game video and image editor, and mods.

GTA 6 probably won't hit PC until 2027 at this rate—the console version got delayed to 2026 this week—but when it does, it'll likely be sumptuous.