Rockstar Remastering GTA 5 For Xbox And PS5 In Glorious 4K60 With Ray Tracing
Did you imagine when Grand Theft Auto V came out for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2013, that we'd be seeing a fresh retail re-release of it nine years later? Much like The Elder Scrolls Part V: Skyrim—which hails from the same era—GTA V has been an enduring success and is about to get its third re-release.
There's no fancy subtitle or name change; Grand Theft Auto V is coming to PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S consoles on March 15th. That's not to say it's exactly the same experience, though. The versions for the current-gen consoles support 60 FPS, HDR output, ray-tracing, "improved texture quality," faster loading times, "immersive 3D audio," and support for platform-specific features, like the PS5's DualSense haptics.
Most interesting to the majority of gamers will probably be the "Performance RT" mode. This mode, available only on the PS5 and Series X, is basically just performance mode with ray tracing enabled. Most likely, it will simply use a lower dynamic resolution to achieve higher-than-30 FPS while keeping ray tracing features. Depending on the upscaling method Rockstar uses, this mode could still look quite good.
Of course, the whole reason that Grand Theft Auto V is still the sensation that it is lies in its online mode. Rockstar has always talked about Grand Theft Auto Online as if it were an entirely separate game, and that's understandable given the differences in their content. But after the re-release launches, it will in fact be available as an entirely separate game—and it'll be free for the first three months after launch on PS5.
If you're already an accomplished crime boss in GTA V or GTA Online using an older console version, you can transfer your progress to the new systems. For story mode, open the game and go to "Game" in the pause menu, then select "Upload Save Game" to send it to the Rockstar Social Club cloud servers. GTA Online progress will transfer automatically, although Rockstar cautions players that purchased GTA$ won't transfer across platforms (i.e. PlayStation to Xbox, or vice versa.)
You'll be able to start playing the remastered version of GTA V on March 15, with physical copies coming available In April. We asked Rockstar when these changes would be coming to the PC version, but haven't heard back yet. We'll update this story when we do.
