Grand Theft Auto 6 might not run at 60 FPS when it comes out on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. A former animator for Rockstar Games has spoken about the title and has said that it’s more likely to manage 30 FPS.
Speaking on a now-private video with Kiwi Talkz (courtesy of GamesRadar), former animator Mike York mentions that Rockstar Games might be able to pull off 60 FPS right now. Rather, he believes we could see the title run at a steady 30 FPS without dipping any lower.
“I don’t know if they’ll be able to pull off 60 FPS,” said York in the interview. “I don’t think so. I think they’re gonna be shooting for 30 FPS – and a locked 30 FPS, meaning it never dips below that. They’re gonna try to optimize as much as they can to where it never goes below 30. It can be bumped to 40, 41, 52, whatever. I bet you, like, later, once it’s on PC, it’ll probably get super optimized and changed and new graphics cards that come out, and you’ll be able to run it at 60 FPS probably at that time.”
York went on to talk about how if Rockstar did want to target 60 FPS for GTA 6, the studio would likely need to use some frame generation technology along with an AI upscaler like FSR.
“I don’t think [the] initial release it’ll come out at 60 FPS unless it’s getting those 60 FPS by [using] an AI upscaler thing like the PlayStation is doing unless something is coming in and helping it get those 60 FPS,” he continued. “I don’t think it’ll get the 60 FPS raw out the gate on a base console. PS5, for instance. Maybe PS5 Pro or whatever, but I still don’t think so.”
However, he doesn’t know what the studio is doing since he doesn’t work there anymore. York last worked at Rockstar on titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto 5 before leaving the studio in 2017.
“I don’t know what they’re doing over there,” York said. “I don’t know how massive this is going to be. But from my experience, they’re going to squeeze every little freaking thing they can out of it and then optimize later for 60 frames because it’s not as important as just making the game amazing at 30 frames.”
It is worth noting that GTA 5‘s original release on the PS3 and Xbox 360 also didn’t run at 60 FPS. The title could barely manage 30 FPS before eventually getting better frame rates once it came to PS4, Xbox One and PC.
Grand Theft Auto 6 doesn’t have a release date beyond Fall, though publisher Take-Two believes it will be “worth waiting for”.
