GTA 6 vs GTA 5: what changed and what is still unknown

13 August 2026 · Updated: 28 August 2026 · 6 min read

GameMapa editorial · how we check facts
Checked: Claude (AI) — fact-checked against the Ukrainian original; not proofread by a native speaker

Updated 28 August 2026, after the An Extended Look show. For this comparison the show delivered nothing: no map area, no frame rate, not a single figure that could be placed next to GTA 5 was put in writing by Rockstar. More — our breakdown of the show. The main difference between GTA 6 and GTA 5 is not in the numbers — it is in how few numbers have actually been announced. We know GTA 5 completely; it came out 13 years ago. Far less about GTA 6 is confirmed than the comparison tables floating around would suggest. Below is only what can be verified.

What is officially confirmed

The map: a number that does not exist

The most repeated claim is that the GTA 6 map is 2.4 times bigger than GTA 5’s. Sometimes it is 2.7 times; sometimes a specific 125 km².

⚠️ Rockstar has never stated any of these numbers. We checked the official sources — the Newswire feed under the Grand Theft Auto VI tag, the pre-order announcement, the game page at rockstargames.com/VI and the PlayStation Store listing. A map area in square kilometres appears in none of them.

More than that, Rockstar never published such a figure for GTA 5 either. Every known estimate for both games was produced by players measuring in-game distances or mapping trailer frames themselves. That is legitimate fan work, but it is an estimate, not a developer fact.

What Rockstar actually says about scale is general phrasing along the lines of its largest and most detailed world yet. The PlayStation Store description says the same thing: the biggest world in the series’ history. No number attached.

The practical takeaway: if an article or video gives you an exact map area for GTA 6 without the word “estimate” next to it, it is made up — and the rest of the numbers in that piece deserve checking too.

Protagonists: three versus two

GTA 5 had three protagonists you could switch between on the fly. That was the game’s headline mechanical innovation in 2013.

GTA 6 has two — Jason and Lucia. The store description frames it this way: the situation they are in is one they can get out of only together. Lucia is the first female lead among the main-series GTA protagonists.

What has not been announced: whether you can switch between them freely or whether these are fixed story chapters. Rockstar has said nothing about the mechanic.

Platforms: the difference that changes everything

This is the most underrated gap between the two releases.

GTA 5 launched in 2013 on PS3 and Xbox 360 — consoles that were already seven years old at the time. The developers were hard-limited by old hardware, and the current-gen and PC versions arrived later as separate releases.

GTA 6 is PS5 and Xbox Series X|S only. PS4 and Xbox One are not supported at all, which means the game was designed with no regard for the older generation. For image quality and world density that is a fundamentally different starting position.

The flip side is the barrier to entry. To play on 19 November you need a current-generation console. No PC version has been announced.

Online: this is where the gap is widest

For most players GTA 5 and GTA Online are effectively one thing. But the timeline was this: the game launched on 17 September 2013, and the online mode on 1 October, two weeks later — and Rockstar announced that online date in advance.

The situation now is the opposite. Rockstar explicitly calls GTA 6 a single-player game, and the store listing carries a single-player line. There is no online date — and no confirmation that an online mode is even being built.

So at launch GTA 6 is a story game, without the second half everyone has grown used to across 13 years of GTA Online.

Price

GTA 5 in 2013 cost what any major console release cost at the time. GTA 6 sells for noticeably more: $79.99 for the standard edition and $99.99 for Ultimate; in the UK that is £69.99 and £89.99.

This reflects the general rise in big-game pricing rather than any special GTA premium. But for a then-and-now comparison the gap is real.

What follows from all this

If you are expecting “GTA 5 but bigger” — at launch you get half of that formula. The story half will be there; the online half will not.

If scale is what you care about — it is almost certainly bigger, but by how much nobody currently knows, including the people writing the comparison tables.

If you play on PS4 or Xbox One — GTA 6 is not coming to you. That is not a matter of time; it is the officially announced platform list.

The bottom line

What is reliably different between GTA 6 and GTA 5: the city, the number of protagonists, the console generation, and whether online exists at launch. Everything else — visuals, mechanics, world size — is described in general terms, without numbers.

The extended showing on 27 August 2026 added no specifics to this comparison: not a single figure that could be placed next to GTA 5 appeared in the written official sources. What the show did confirm is in our breakdown. Invented figures still will not appear here.