GTA 6 pre‑orders are live, but I’m waiting for proof it plays as good as it looks
No gameplay, no pre-order
📅 GTA 6 pre-orders went up on June 25, offering standard and Ultimate editions.
🙈 Despite a November 19 release date, no official gameplay footage has been released
🤔 Skepticism remains regarding whether final game visuals will match the cinematic trailers
🤷♂️ Information about specific gameplay mechanics remains limited, with few details confirmed by the developer
GTA 6 pre-orders went live on June 25 and, to no one’s surprise, millions of people have already handed over $80 for the standard edition, or $100 for the Ultimate Edition.
I, too, jumped on the PlayStation Store to reserve my digital copy (which, worth noting, won’t come on a disc if you buy a physical version) but then quickly realized something.
Despite the game releasing on November 19, and Rockstar Games releasing two trailers for the game, we still haven’t seen any GTA 6 gameplay.
Just think about that for a second. The most-anticipated game of all time that’s expected to break every record at retail and is now up for pre-order, still hasn’t shown us any genuine, undoctored gameplay.
For that reason alone, I can’t bring myself to pre-order GTA 6, at least not right now.
Won’t GTA 6 just look like the trailers?
Now, you might think that the two trailers for GTA 6 are representative of how the game will look when it releases. And while I’m extremely sceptical about that (we’ve seen countless games get downgraded over the years and even an ex-Rockstar dev said the graphics won’t look as good), I’d still like to see a mission or deep dive that shows how Grand Theft Auto 6 plays.
There’s so much that we still don’t know about the game, with a Brazilian Amazon listing providing more information than Rockstar has about what gameplay awaits. We have confirmation that you’ll be able to switch between the two characters, Jason and Lucia, like you could in GTA 5. And apparently the world will feel more alive than ever with NPCs having their own routines that they carry out.
No one has pre-ordered GTA 6 because the gameplay looks fantastic, or because we’ve seen some revolutionary new features that weren’t previously possible.
But to have not shown even a snippet of real-time footage with the release date less than six months away is extraordinary.
Right now, everyone who has pre-ordered GTA 6 is doing so because they’ve enjoyed previous games in the series (a fair reason), believe the game will look exactly how the trailers depict (very unlikely), or simply have a “fear of missing out” and want to be part of the zeitgeist.
Either way, no one has pre-ordered GTA 6 because the gameplay looks fantastic, or because we’ve seen some revolutionary new features that weren’t previously possible in Grand Theft Auto 5. And that just feels… wrong.
Your move, Rockstar
While pre-ordering a game has always seemed silly to me unless it’s a collector’s edition (speaking of which, where is the GTA 6 Collector’s Edition, Rockstar?) I’m standing my ground until we get a new trailer that shows exactly what players can expect this November, and not just a cherry-picked, cinematic montage of what we hope the game will look like.
Up next: Steam Frame gets its first compatible game – and it’s a classic from Valve
Adam Vjestica is The Shortcut’s Senior Editor. Formerly TechRadar’s Gaming Hardware Editor, Adam has also worked at Nintendo of Europe as a Content Marketing Editor, where he helped launch the Nintendo Switch. He also runs a retro gaming YouTube channel called Game on, boy! Follow him on X @ItsMrProducts.