Midnight in Auckland on November 19 is going to be a strange little moment in gaming history. While most of the planet is asleep or stuck at work, a country of just over 5 million people will be booting up Grand Theft Auto 6 for the first time.
That’s because Rockstar is launching GTA 6 at midnight local time in each region rather than flipping one global switch. New Zealand reaches November 19 before anyone else, so New Zealanders get the game before anyone else. Simple as that.
And no, you don’t have to move to Wellington to get in on it. There’s a catch, though, and it depends entirely on which console is sitting under your TV.
The Xbox trick that gets you a full day early
If you’re on Xbox, change your console’s region to New Zealand and that should unlock GTA 6 at midnight New Zealand time. In practical terms, that’s an entire day early.
Here’s the math. When it’s 12:00am on Thursday, November 19 in New Zealand, it’s Wednesday, November 18 at 3:00am PST, 5:00am CST or 6:00am EST in the US. Set an alarm and you’re playing before your coworkers have had coffee.
PS5 owners, I’m sorry. The classic New Zealand trick doesn’t work on PlayStation, so you’ll be waiting the full stretch while Xbox players are already deep into it. The way Rockstar is handling release times, anyone with an Xbox gets to play before anyone on PS5 has a chance.
(Yes, this is the rare console war skirmish that Xbox wins outright. Enjoy it while it lasts.)
Nobody knows why Rockstar is doing it this way
It’s unclear why Rockstar chose a rolling release. The obvious explanation, protecting servers from a stampede, doesn’t hold up, because GTA 6 won't have any online multiplayer at launch.
When the game arrives in November, it’s strictly a single-player experience. Based on recent comments from Take-Two, it sounds like online won’t be added until 2027 at the earliest.
There’s a softer version of the server theory that still works, though. Enough people trying to play GTA 6 on launch day could give Xbox and PlayStation’s own servers trouble, and staggering the launch by time zone could perhaps take a little of that pressure off.
Thirteen years is a long time to wait
The frenzy makes sense once you do the arithmetic. It’s been 13 years since the last Grand Theft Auto game, and the franchise skipped an entire console generation without a brand-new entry.
Rockstar itself hasn’t shipped a major new game in eight years. Red Dead Redemption 2 came out all the way back in 2018.
Stack those gaps on top of trailers that have been impressive and the GTA 6 Extended Look on Netflix, and the level of anticipation isn’t surprising at all.
The controversies got here before the game did
This being GTA, the drama showed up early. Some people are saying they’ll ban their significant others from playing GTA 6 because of the game’s relationship mechanics.
Then there’s the physical edition situation, which has plenty of people upset. GTA 6 boxes will be sold on store shelves, but the only thing inside is a digital code. No disc.
For collectors who like a shelf full of cases, that stings. For everyone else it’s a shrug.
None of this is likely to slow anything down. Come November 19, GTA 6 is on track to be a runaway success, controversies or not.
Somewhere in Auckland, someone with an Xbox is about to become the most envied person on the internet for roughly 24 hours.
