How ‘GTA 6’ looks on Xbox Series S: What we know

At the end of August, Rockstar Games treated us to our first official look at Grand Theft Auto VI gameplay. The only problem? It was captured on PlayStation 5, leaving Xbox owners hanging.

That’s not a huge deal in a vacuum, as every video game trailer has to be captured on something, and the game isn’t coming to PC at launch. It’s an issue because there are plenty of folks out there who own the Xbox Series S, the $500 slightly-less-powerful Xbox Series console that arguably represents the best value in the current-gen console space right now. Personally, I’d argue for the Switch 2, but GTA isn’t coming to that, so it’s a moot point in this context.

Anyway, you’re wondering how GTA VI will look and play on Xbox Series S. Let’s get into it.

Grand Theft Auto VI on Xbox Series S: How will it look and run?

Unfortunately, you know as much about the state of GTA on Series S as we do, at the time of publication. Rockstar has not divulged any information about that build of the game, nor has it been shown publicly. At best, we can look at the trailer captured on PS5 and make some educated guesses.

For example, if GTA VI is running at 30 frames per second on a regular PS5 (as it did in the trailer), it’s certainly not going to run any faster than that on a Series S. At best, it’ll be the same, but as we’ve seen with some Series S games over the years, there could be performance drawbacks in intense situations.

The same goes for resolution, which could be cut down on Series S. According to the video game tech experts at Digital Foundry, the PS5 trailer was running at a native 1440p. Most Series S games do not reach that level, and considering that Digital Foundry called GTA VI the most impressive real-time graphical rendering they’d ever seen, one can imagine it won’t reach that resolution on Series S, either.

But, again, it needs to be said that these are all just guesses. Rockstar hasn’t given us anything else to work with right now. We’ll let you know when we hear more.