GTA 6 Pre-Load: Date and Disk Space Requirements Confirmed for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S

Rockstar has confirmed details of the GTA 6 pre-load, which will let pre-order customers download the game from Sony or Microsoft servers ahead of the full release date on November 19th.

Given the intense interest in the game, even the pre-load might cause servers to buckle, but it's still worth doing to avoid the absolute carnage that seems inevitable for the release day itself. After all, Rockstar has confirmed that GTA 6 is a single-player game only, so once you have the files downloaded, you should only be a short decryption step away from playing the game offline.

The pre-load times are slightly different for each platform, with PS5 and PS5 Pro owners getting to start at midnight local time on Tuesday, 10th November, while Xbox Series X and Series S owners can pre-load from 12AM GMT (midnight in the UK).

That means Xbox owners can start pre-loading earlier in territories west of the UK than PlayStation owners, while those east of the UK face the opposite situation. It's not clear whether this will be repeated for the game's release date, which is expected to stretch across a 19-hour window - though this has yet to be confirmed by Rockstar.

The total file size may vary depending on system - I would assume the Xbox Series S release to be a bit lighter, for instance, if it uses lower-res textures and other assets - but the current build tops out at 212GB.

That's about a third of the usable storage on a 1TB PS5, about a quarter of the storage available on a 1TB Xbox Series X, and more than half of the user storage on a 512GB Xbox Series S. PS5 Pro owners are sitting prettiest, and should expect to see only around a ninth of their 1.86TB of usable space being taken up by GTA 6.

Rockstar also notes that code-in-box orders will be available from 12th November from retailers, so "physical" customers will still be able to take part in the pre-load campaign.

Let me know what you think of the news in the comments below. Are you looking forward to the release, or dreading it?