GTA 6 Leaks Suggest Day-Night Cycle Is Several Times Longer Than in GTA 5

Leaked gameplay footage of Grand Theft Auto VI suggests Rockstar Games may significantly extend the duration of the in-game day-night cycle compared to previous entries in the series.

After several gameplay clips leaked online in August, an observant player reviewed the footage to calculate the day-night cycle in the upcoming title.

According to observations by Miserable-Price-7484, the developers appear to have notably increased the length of an in-game day. The user noted in the leak that “one in-game minute now passes in 6 real seconds instead of 2, as it did in GTA IV and GTA V.”

Extrapolating that rate across a full cycle yields 6 real minutes for every 60 in-game minutes, 72 minutes (1 hour and 12 minutes) for 12 in-game hours, and 144 minutes (2 hours and 24 minutes) for a complete 24-hour in-game day. In comparison, a full day in GTA V lasted just 48 real minutes.

Community feedback suggests many players would welcome the adjustment in the retail release of GTA VI. Players such as piomat100 felt that in-game days in GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 tended to “fly by too fast.”

Grand Theft Auto VI is scheduled for release on November 19 of this year on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles. Rockstar Games and Take-Two have not yet specified a release date or launch window for the PC version.