GTA 6 Will Start at Midnight Across the Globe, So Players Are Already Setting Their Consoles to New Zealand

Grand Theft Auto 6 will launch at midnight local time in most countries on November 19, according to times spotted on the PlayStation Store by GTAVice, meaning players in New Zealand will get to play roughly 20 hours before players in Mexico and other parts of Central America get their turn. That difference in timing has already led some fans to think about changing their console region settings so they can start playing sooner than the rest of the players around them.

No Physical Copies, No Shorter Path

There is no early physical copy of GTA 6 to get hold of ahead of time. Rockstar’s game will arrive as a title played by one person, without other players joining online. Players will be able to get the game copied to their system ahead of the launch, but the game itself will not become available to play until each place’s set time arrives.

The times listed on the PlayStation Store, spotted by GTAVice, show 15 major points around the world when GTA 6 becomes available, set across many parts of the world where local midnight falls at different moments. The first of these begins in New Zealand at 11am UTC on November 18, which works out to midnight on November 19 for Kiwi players.

That means Kiwi fans are set to be the very first people anywhere to play GTA 6, purely because of where the country sits on the globe.

This has already caught the attention of fans elsewhere, some of whom are weighing whether changing their console settings is worth the trouble just to play a few hours sooner.

The Order the World Gets to Play

Based on the times GTAVice found, GTA 6 becomes available in the following order, moving east to west across the globe as midnight arrives in each place:

1. New Zealand
2. Australia
3. Japan
4. India
5. Europe
6. The U.K.
7. The U.S.

In the U.S., every part of the country gets to play at midnight Eastern time, rather than each state getting its own separate moment. That means players on the west coast will have a few extra hours to play before it is time to sleep, assuming they are planning on sleeping at all that night.

Players further along the list, in Mexico and Central America, will be among the last anywhere to get their turn, arriving roughly 20 hours after New Zealand’s midnight has already come and gone.

Xbox and PlayStation

The trick of changing a console’s region to play early does not work the same way for every player.

• Xbox Series X/S owners can change their console’s region setting to reach the New Zealand time early, giving them the very first chance to play GTA 6 anywhere in the world.
• PlayStation 5 owners do not have that choice. Changing the console’s region setting does not open the game early on Sony’s system.
• PlayStation 5 owners could, in theory, try a different method: setting up a separate New Zealand account, paid for with a New Zealand gift card, though this takes far more work than simply changing a setting.

For players hoping to get into GTA 6 the moment it becomes available anywhere on Earth, Xbox offers the simpler path right now, since the region change alone is enough to get in early. PlayStation 5 owners are left with a far more roundabout way of reaching the same result, one that involves setting up accounts and payment methods tied to a country they may never have set foot in.

What Happens Before November 19

GTA 6 is now 72 days away from launch. Players who have ordered the game ahead of time will be able to start getting it copied to their system from November 12. That is also the day boxed copies, which include a code for downloading the game rather than a packaged copy of the game itself, begin shipping.

Rockstar has not yet said how much storage space players will need to have free in order to get GTA 6 running on their system. IGN says it will share those details once Rockstar makes them known.

Whether the New Zealand time actually leads to a wave of players changing their console regions on November 19 is not yet clear. But for fans determined to play GTA 6 as early as possible, the plan is already taking shape — one part of the world, and one console setting, at a time.

Source: ign.com

GTA 6 · launch times · New Zealand · PlayStation · Rockstar Games · Xbox