GTA V Loads Way Faster On PlayStation 5

Grand Theft Auto V is a very good video game. We’ve known this for almost a decade, across more platforms than we ever should have had to know it. But one thing the game has never been able to sort out during that timeframe is its enormous loading time.

While on the one hand it’s completely understandable—the game is loading an entire open world, and is doing it using old code—on the other hand we’re now living in 2022 and 90-second load times are a pain in the ass.

With the game due for a next-gen re-release on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S in a few hours, then, it’s probably a good time to check in and see how that particular concern is going. Especially since we don’t really need to know any of the other improvements (of course it’ll look nice—it looks great on PC, and looked great on PS4 Pro/Xbox One X as well).

VGC crunched the numbers from clocking “start/load” to assuming control, and found that while on PlayStation 4 it took 1:33 to load the game, on PlayStation 5 that figure was down to “just” 27 seconds. I say “just” because while that’s an enormous cut, it’s still a lot for a console that sold itself on having practically no load times (but again, we’ll excuse this particular game since it was originally developed for the PlayStation 3).

In case you were wondering, Zack is currently playing Grand Theft Auto Online on PS5 for coverage later this week, and says the game’s multiplayer mode is also enjoying much-improved load times.

If you’re looking at picking the game up (again) on new consoles, be warned there are some weird pricing discrepancies. As a launch offer until June 14, GTA V’s story mode will be $10 on PS5 and GTA Online will be free, while on Xbox Series X|S the story mode will be $20 and GTA Online will be $10.