PlayStation Store data reveals 15 different unlock times. New Zealand plays first, Mexico closes 19 hours later. And your time depends on your account, not where you live.
Rockstar has not issued a press release with the unlock times, but it no longer needs to: the data is already in the PlayStation Store. Fan site GTAVice.net dug it out and Eurogamer reported it on 8 September.
Fifteen times, not one
On PS5, GTA VI has 15 different regional launch times. It does not unlock for everyone at once, as the Extended Look premiere on Netflix did.
| Your account's region | Local time | In UTC |
|---|---|---|
| New Zealand first | 00:00 on 19 Nov | 11:00 on 18 Nov |
| UK | 00:00 on 19 Nov | 00:00 on 19 Nov |
| Spain · Germany · France | 00:00 on 19 Nov | 23:00 on 18 Nov |
| US Eastern | 00:00 on 19 Nov | 05:00 on 19 Nov |
| Mexico and Central America last | 00:00 on 19 Nov | 06:00 on 19 Nov |
Both ends come straight from store data: New Zealand opens at 11:00 UTC on 18 November, and Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua close 19 hours later. In between, the pattern is midnight local time in each region.
The mistake many people will make
The New Zealand trick
On Xbox, the old trick of switching console region to New Zealand to play early seemingly still works.
On PlayStation it does not. There it is the region of the account you bought with that counts, not the console's. And changing a PlayStation account's region is not free: it affects your wallet balance and any active subscriptions.
If you bought the boxed version
The "physical" editions that actually contain a code have that code region-locked. Several retailers warned about it as soon as pre-orders opened, and Rockstar later clarified which countries are affected.
Countries with no data
Timestamps do not appear on every store. GTAVice notes they are missing for Bahrain, China, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman and Qatar. In the Philippines, Russia, Serbia and Vietnam the store pages redirect to other countries' stores.
Sources: PlayStation Store data compiled by GTAVice.net and reported by Eurogamer.
Sources
What this article is based on. Official Rockstar sources first; titles are shown in their original language.
