GTA 5's $40 Current-Gen Upgrade Goes Free Tomorrow

Forty dollars is forty dollars. Starting tomorrow, June 18, anyone who owns a PS4 copy or a digital Xbox One copy of Grand Theft Auto 5 can upgrade to the PS5 or Xbox Series X|S version for free. Rockstar announced the move alongside details about an upcoming GTA Online heist, and it applies to any PS4 version of the game, physical or digital. Xbox One owners need to have the digital edition.

The current-gen port, which launched in March 2022, added 60 FPS performance, up to 4K resolution, ray tracing, HDR, faster load times, and 3D audio. It's been sitting at $39.99 on the PlayStation Store and Xbox marketplace since launch. PC players can also upgrade from the Legacy version to the Enhanced version for free, picking up ray-traced ambient occlusion and global illumination in the process. Progress migration remains available, so everything you've earned in GTA Online carries over.

Rockstar is framing this around The Kortz Center Heist, a new multi-stage GTA Online update arriving in July where players break into a gallery to steal art. But the timing is impossible to ignore: GTA 6 launches November 19, and GTA 5 sales are going to crater the moment that marketing campaign kicks into gear. Giving away the upgrade now gets the remaining last-gen holdouts onto current hardware, plugged into GTA Online, and spending money in the months before the transition. I think it's a good deal for players, but let's not pretend Rockstar is doing this out of charity. Every last-gen player who upgrades is another active user in the GTA Online economy during its final stretch, and that's worth more to Rockstar than $40 per copy ever was.

GTA 5 has sold over 230 million copies across three console generations. According to OpenCritic, the game still holds a 92 average from top critics. The free upgrade goes live tomorrow with no announced end date.