I'm quietly certain my PS5 Pro purchase will be a GTA 6 essential

The GTA 6 trailer that dropped earlier this week has been smashing records left, right and centre on its way to becoming one of the biggest uploads YouTube has ever seen. It's closing in on 100 million views already, and boasts over five million likes at the time of writing, underlining just how big the game will be when it finally arrives in around a year's time.

Since the trailer dropped, loads of people have devoted hours to picking it apart to zoom in on tiny details, hidden easter eggs and unheralded reveals. That means new vehicles, locations, characters and much more.

Still, I can't help but feel that the most important detail of all is right there in the video's description, put there knowingly by Rockstar itself: "This trailer was captured entirely in-game from a PlayStation 5, comprised of equal parts gameplay and cutscenes."

Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 2 - YouTube

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That's a simply huge bit of intel to add to the trailer, confirming not only that there are indeed gameplay moments in there, but that everything else is a cutscene rendered on a base PS5.

It follows that the level of unreal graphical fidelity on show in the trailer, which truly is jaw-dropping, will be available to most console gamers. If you extrapolate that out to what a PlayStation 5 Pro might be able to manage, though, it gets even more exciting.

Every major analyst in the industry has indicated that PS5 and Xbox Series X owners hoping for 60fps performance with graphics like those in the trailer should get a reality check. It's far more likely that the game will run at 30fps, at least with these bells and whistles enabled.

However, if you're like me and have managed to grab a PS5 Pro at some point, then things could be way more optimistic. At the very least, we'll probably get a boost to the game's native resolution and better upscaling using PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution). Why not dream, though? Perhaps this will be an example of the bigger upgrades that are possible, and could even bring 60fps to the table.

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Such a mode might still require cutbacks, and maybe would end up looking less high-fidelity than the base console's default, but if it ran twice as smoothly, that would still be a huge boost. After all, those who played GTA 5 on the PS3 back when it first launched will remember how huge the boost was when upgrading to the PS4 version.

In recent weeks, I've been gaming on PC, using an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, then a 5070 Ti rig to see what the grass is like on the other side. The short answer is that it's fabulous, albeit way more expensive – but GTA 6 will remind PC gamers of what they're missing out on. After all, it won't launch on PC right away, with no clear timeline set for when it'll make its way to that platform.

So, if you want the best possible version of GTA 6 at launch, there's no question that it'll be on PS5 Pro, with the only real unknown being how big an upgrade Rockstar will end up delivering. As someone who shelled out for the premium console, that's a relief, although it was always realistically going to be the case. Now to watch the trailer again, and count down the days until 26 May 2026.