Two leaked images that have been circulating for years are getting a second look, and the new read on them suggests Rockstar Games may have once planned a performance mode for GTA 6 that could push frame rates well past 30 fps on PS5 and Xbox.
The analysis comes from a social media user going by Frizky, who examined a pair of previously reported leaks, according to Notebookcheck. The first is debugging data from an Xbox console that surfaced in 2026 via a source called 808mafia. The text in that image is described as extremely poor quality, but it reportedly references a fidelity mode and a resolution range of 1440p to 2160p, the kind of detail typically tied to graphics settings menus in development builds.
The second image is older and murkier in origin. It comes from a 2023 leak allegedly supplied by the son of Aaron Garbut, one of Rockstar North's development leads, though the gameplay clip itself was never confirmed to have actually come from a relative of his. Frizky's reading of that footage is that an earlier build of the game included a performance mode offering something above the 30 fps currently expected at launch.
None of that sits well against what Rockstar has said publicly. Rob Nelson, a co-studio head at Rockstar North, has hinted that the console versions arriving on release day will target 30 fps, full stop. Digital Foundry's frame-by-frame breakdown of the Netflix Extended Look and other trailers, all captured on a base PS5, backs that up. The site's read is that the game renders natively at 1440p and 30 fps before being upscaled to a 4K output.
There's a reason a 60 fps mode might not have survived into the shipping game. GTA 6's open world leans hard on CPU-heavy NPC behavior and ray-traced lighting, the kind of workload that chews through performance budgets fast. Vice City's density may simply be too much for current-generation hardware to render at double the frame rate without serious compromises elsewhere.
The PS5 Pro, with its PSSR upscaling, is the console most likely to narrow that gap before anything resembling a PC port shows up. But its real advantage is a beefier GPU, not a different approach, and reporting suggests even that hardware could struggle with how much Leonida throws at it. What options, if any, exist for players chasing higher frame rates at launch remains unclear.
There's a wrinkle that could settle the question sooner than Rockstar would like. Outlets reportedly already have review codes for GTA 6, and if any of them probe performance settings before the embargo lifts, leaks could confirm or kill the 40-60 fps theory outright. Rockstar has reportedly built persistent watermarking into those codes specifically to deter that kind of early disclosure, which suggests the studio knows exactly how much attention its frame-rate choices are getting.
GDFiled by The Games Desk
Consoles, handhelds, PC gaming and the platforms and hardware behind them.
More from this desk →
Be the first to comment
Join the argument. No password, just your email or a passkey.