GTA 6 unlock times revealed; Xbox New Zealand trick still works
Rockstar has revealed the worldwide unlock schedule for Grand Theft Auto 6, which launches 19th November on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. The game will not go live everywhere at once on PS5, where 15 separate regional launch times apply, according to data from fansite GTAVice.net that Eurogamer reports was pulled from PlayStation Store listings.
The earliest unlock is 11am UTC on 18th November and the latest 6am UTC on 19th November, a 19-hour spread. New Zealand plays first, with the game unlocking at midnight NZDT on 19th November. Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua wait longest, unlocking at midnight CST on 20th November.
Unlock time is tied to the region of the PlayStation Store account used for the pre-order. Some store pages, including those for Bahrain, China, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman and Qatar, show no release timestamp, and pages for the Philippines, Russia, Serbia and Vietnam redirect to other countries' stores.
Xbox owners can seemingly still use the long-running New Zealand trick to play early, Eurogamer reports, though the details were not fully spelled out.
The staggered unlock schedule means players in different regions will get up to 19 hours of head start on GTA 6, and Xbox users can exploit the New Zealand time-zone trick to jump the queue.