// ENGADGET — GAMING
How long will it take you to download GTA 6 based on your internet speeds?
You won't have to ruin your weekend plans to download this open-world epic.
There's no getting around it: GTA VI is the most anticipated video game of all time. As such (at time of writing) Rockstar will let you pre-download the huge official 212GB file a week ahead of time of release. But how long is that download going to take? We're talking about arguably the most hyped game ever here. Depending on your connection, is it going to fill a full day or a couple of hours? Let's get into the practicalities of downloading the biggest game of this current console generation.
This is quite a difficult question to answer, but I'll do my best to guide you based on my experience of downloading GTA VI within the last few hours as I'm typing this. I live in Edinburgh, Scotland. I have the fastest available fiber broadband connection in my city (a full 1Gbps of rapid downloads speeds). I just downloaded Rockstar's hugely anticipated Vice City mega hit with my PS5 Pro in exactly 63 minutes and 30 seconds. Yes, I timed it on my iPhone. I clearly need to get a life.
For context, I tested my console's internet settings immediately before pre-installing GTA VI (I went with the code in the box version, because I'm a sentimental old soul who really wanted said box). Plus you get an old school poster, too. My PS5 Pro's download speeds hit around 568Mbps over a wired LAN connection just before I started the download. The highest I've seen Sony's supercharged console hit in network tests on my fiber optic is exactly 816Mbps, and that was extremely late at night when network demands would be low.
I'm obviously in a privileged position of having access to extremely fast internet, although it costs me a pretty penny. According to Allconnect, average broadband speeds in the United States range between 143Mbps to 314Mbps. The official preload download size of GTA 6 is 212GB.
In my case, it was precisely 209.921GB on my PS5 Pro. If we take that lower end broadband stat as a starting point, it will take a whole lot of American gamers around three hours and 56 minutes to download the Leonida crime epic. At the higher range of 314Mbps? You're looking at an install time of roughly 90 minutes.
If you have decent broadband, it should take no more than a few hours to download the biggest (in literal file size terms) single-player game of all time. Put it another way: you won't have to ruin your weekend plans to download this open-world epic if your broadband speeds are anywhere near average. Although the PS5 Pro I used to test GTA VI downloads is an expensive console, there's nothing special about its wired connectivity, as the PS5 Pro, base PS5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S all offer a 1Gbps Ethernet port.
It's very rare to see a PS5/Xbox Series console accessing the full bandwidth your router and internet connection is capable of — just look at the glacial Wi-Fi speeds of downloading GTA VI on my fiber connection in the shot above. When using Wi-Fi, several factors can slow download speeds, which I'll touch on shortly in more depth. But even if you're connected via Ethernet, chances are your promised max speed isn't being delivered due to to the server you're downloading from.
The launch of GTA VI is a great example of the physical limitations of digital storefronts. This is almost certainly going to be the best-selling console title of the generation. As such, a whole lot of folks are pre-installing it before launch at the same time. This places more stress on console servers (be it PlayStation or Xbox), in turn slowing download speeds. But even on a quiet day, it's rare that you'll be able to download a file from, say, the PlayStation Store at a speed like 1Gbps.
The download speed on a PS5 or Xbox can seem like it's constantly changing every time you check it. That's not usually down to your router or console, it's a server or intermediary managing tens of thousands of concurrent requests and deciding how fast it wants to send you the file. On