Rockstar Claims GTA VI Trailer 2 "Captured Entirely" by PlayStation 5 Base Hardware

[T0@st]

Not too long after announcing the delay of their flagship next-gen AAA+ game, Rockstar Games appeased the masses with the uploading of a bombastic second trailer—showcasing Grand Theft Auto VI's various colorful cast members, Vice City locales, and spectacular visual effects. Online debaters have picked this cinematic preview apart; many doubters reckon that teaser material (mostly) consists of pre-rendered CGI—pumped out by "pro-grade" equipment. Many observers did not pick up on a small text detail—"captured on PS5"—at the tail end of the studio's GTA VI Trailer 2. To reiterate this point, the Rockstar Games official social media account sent out a bulletin. Yesterday evening's official alert insisted that their: "Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 2 was captured entirely in-game from a PlayStation 5, comprised of equal parts gameplay and cutscenes." This tidbit is also mentioned in the trailer's YouTube description.

Earlier today, the Digital Foundry team published their (must read, or watch) technical critique of Rockstar's forthcoming magnum opus. In their (collective) professional opinion, Rockstar's claim deserves merit: "the trailer was released in 4K at 30 FPS with black bars—producing a rather odd 20:9 aspect ratio—with text at the end of the trailer confirming it was recorded on a base PS5 instead of the more powerful PS5 Pro. Internal resolution counts come out at 1440p, or 2560x1152 to be exact—that's 80 percent of 1440p on the vertical axis. The trailer seems to be using a spatial upscaler, something like AMD's first-generation FSR, with that characteristic curved look present in fine detail like distant text. This means image quality is a little soft, but makes it more believable that the game is actually running on a base PS5, bearing in mind the relatively realistic details and graphical effects elsewhere." Going back to late 2024, another highly anticipated "AAA+" title was unveiled—The Witcher 4; with an Unreal Engine 5 underpinning. At the time, CD Projekt RED hinted about this fantasy blockbuster's introductory trailer being pre-rendered by an "unannounced NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU." We later learned that this mysterious bit of hardware was a formidable GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card. Given GTA VI's (2026) "consoles first" launch, Rockstar engineers do not have the luxury of (immediately) pairing their proprietary RAGE engine with cutting-edge hardware. An elevated visual feast—on PC platforms—is expected further down the line.




The Rockstar Games video description states: "Vice City, USA. Jason and Lucia have always known the deck is stacked against them. But when an easy score goes wrong, they find themselves on the darkest side of the sunniest place in America, in the middle of a criminal conspiracy stretching across the state of Leonida—forced to rely on each other more than ever if they want to make it out alive. This trailer was captured entirely in-game from a PlayStation 5, comprised of equal parts gameplay and cutscenes."

Explore Vice City and beyond at https://www.rockstargames.com/VI

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Chaitanya]

Show us a live demo else its just another random statement.

 

[Quicks]

What game companies demo and end results are most of the time far from the truth.

 

[dj-electric]

Rockstar has a pretty clean history of not overselling their visuals. They use in-game sets for their trailers and cutscenes. People can actually go and find those with hacks and tools.
They might oversell you the amount of NPCs or traffic density, though.

 

[Aquilino]

Rockstar engineers do not have the luxury of (immediately) pairing their proprietary RAGE engine with cutting-edge hardware.

Ohhhh, poor old them with their hundreds of zillions and machine printing games don't have moneys... Let's hope next GTA online allows them to break even.

Of course they will try to force players to double dip. Of course.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I mean, there is nothing there that the PS5 shouldn't be able to produce.

I'd bet Rockstar just has some... rockstar level LOD/texture compression/Memory management mojo thanks to their proprietary engine and the game is likely going to be absolutely bonkers huge to download like 200+ GB of memory space required.

Every individual asset in the scenes scenes looks current gen quality, what always elevates Rockstar is the density and "living" feel of their world. Rockstar will go and put time and effort into making 45 different kinds of distinctly different watches NPCs can wear, and then they'll go into that level of detail with all their assets, and as a result their game world doesn't have the same kinds of repeating patterns that human eye recognizes easily and as a result the "graphics" look better because we're already on the border of photo-realistic imagery with current gen raster graphics when done right.

 

[GerKNG]

cool... then show me 20 minutes of uncut gameplay.

 

[FierceRed]

Ohhhh, poor old them with their hundreds of zillions and machine printing games don't have moneys... Let's hope next GTA online allows them to break even.

While I understand the sentiment - since a bit of sodium per day is healthy - at a certain point in your career and endeavours, you'll realize that money isn't the limiting factor.

NASA had lots of money. Doesn't mean it didn't take a lot of time and a lot of prototypes for those best-in-class people to send a rover to Mars.

As for the claims that it was captured entirely on Playstation 5 Non-Pro, I respond with a resounding...

"So what? Bullshots are generated on base hardware too. Doesn't mean your final product will look like after a half-dozen performance passes when the engineers are given their resource budgets."

In other words... ho hum another branch of the Rockstar marketing budget striking again.

 

[Upgrayedd]

Rockstar has a pretty clean history of not overselling their visuals. They use in-game sets for their trailers and cutscenes. People can actually go and find those with hacks and tools.
They might oversell you the amount of NPCs or traffic density, though.

Mostly this. BUT IT GETS BETTER
They've always been honest in trailers. The best part about these trailers is that this is the worst GTA VI will ever look. For R*, It's equivalent to GTA V on PS3/X360. And people are sitting here and still don't believe it. They're so far ahead of everyone else. It's just goes to show there's imitation and then the real thing, made by real work.

 

[close]

Mostly this. BUT IT GETS BETTER
They've always been honest in trailers. The best part about these trailers is that this is the worst GTA VI will ever look. For R*, It's equivalent to GTA V on PS3/X360. And people are sitting here and still don't believe it. They're so far ahead of everyone else. It's just goes to show there's imitation and then the real thing, made by real work.

But the thing is, almost none of that trailer looks like *gameplay*. Like "user in front of the screen" gameplay. Save for a few scenes, all barely a second long, it looks like in game cutscenes. You don't get the feel for the game's graphics by looking at that alone. Give me the timestamp where I can see what looks like even 3s of gameplay.

So the "equal parts gameplay and cutscenes" anyway sounds like a carefully crafted sentence. And people probably just had enough of carefully crafted sentences.

 

[xorbe]

... they could have it render at mega ultra quality 4K at 1 fps, capture it frame by frame, restore to normal speed, technically captured on actual hardware ...

 

[Upgrayedd]

But the thing is, almost none of that trailer looks like *gameplay*. Like "user in front of the screen" gameplay. Save for a few scenes, all barely a second long, it looks like in game cutscenes. You don't get the feel for the game's graphics by looking at that alone. Give me the timestamp where I can see what looks like even 3s of gameplay.

So the "equal parts gameplay and cutscenes" anyway sounds like a carefully crafted sentence. And people probably just had enough of carefully crafted sentences.

It's how it will look. They've always been true for using game assets for trailers. They're not really known for gameplay reveals until much closer to release but this is undoubtedly how the game will look at it's worse (initial release on base consoles). Go back and checkout the gta v and rdr2 trailer release sequences. Nothing was faked or exaggerated in any of those. Just well chosen camera angles.

... they could have it render at mega ultra quality 4K at 1 fps, capture it frame by frame, restore to normal speed, technically captured on actual hardware ...

Lol I feel like this is just the reaction of people so used to mediocre souless garbage being released as AAA that anything with some real real effort must be fake. I love it. It's what actual hard work looks like, not a rushed switch to UE5. And people just can't believe it hahaha

 

[silapakorn]

Not sure why many people have trouble believing it's from PS5, the trailer isn't that graphically impressive to begin with.

 

[Scrizz]

Not sure why many people have trouble believing it's from PS5, the trailer isn't that graphically impressive to begin with.

exactly

 

[Jermelescu]

It will look a lot better on PC and I can't wait to buy a new one when this masterpiece launches.
AMD should release their new GPUs by that time and my wallet is ready.
As far as quality goes, it's Rockstar, so of course it will be waaaay ahead of its time. This is what unlimited budget and thousands of people working only on one game at a time for 5+ years gives you.
I bet that this'll make 3 cool billion dollars by the time it launches on PC and more than 10 billion by the time they release RDR3.
Even if the base price will be $100, everybody and their dog will buy it and we will have world peace for at least a week when it launches in conslows.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Probably they are using some kind of DLSS/FSR at Performance levels, or worst.

 

[kikimaru024]

Not sure why many people have trouble believing it's from PS5, the trailer isn't that graphically impressive to begin with.

It's graphically incredible if your last frame of reference is GTAV on PS4 ;-)

 

[rustbucket4245]

I would be skeptical if it weren't for how incredible RDR2 (released in 2018!) still looks and how smooth it runs even on mid-level hardware. I've never been a fan of GTA, but I will forever commend Rockstar on their development/production talent.

 

[Heiro78]

Ohhhh, poor old them with their hundreds of zillions and machine printing games don't have moneys... Let's hope next GTA online allows them to break even.

Of course they will try to force players to double dip. Of course.

They got me double dipping. I really wanna play GTA6 and not wait a year and a half min for it. I'm a sucker for it. Now if it really costs $100. Then I'll be ok waiting, I'll just avoid spoilers

Mostly this. BUT IT GETS BETTER
They've always been honest in trailers. The best part about these trailers is that this is the worst GTA VI will ever look. For R*, It's equivalent to GTA V on PS3/X360. And people are sitting here and still don't believe it. They're so far ahead of everyone else. It's just goes to show there's imitation and then the real thing, made by real work.

Very fair point. I can't imagine what the 3rd update to the game will be like in 2037. Similar to the most recent GTA5 update this year.

 

[Upgrayedd]

Not sure why many people have trouble believing it's from PS5, the trailer isn't that graphically impressive to begin with.

exactly

Name something that looks better on PS5? Then remember the scale R* makes games at.