Grand Theft Auto 6 worldwide unlock times revealed, and Xbox owners can seemingly still use the old New Zealand trick to play early

Grand Theft Auto 6 arrives 19th November on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Depending on where you may be in the world, however, when you actually get to play varies.

Starting with PS5, GTA 6 has 15 different regional launch times. If you pre-ordered a digital copy through the PlayStation Store, the game’s unlock time will be dictated by your account’s region and store. In other words, it won’t unlock for everyone at the same time.

GTA fansite GTAVice.net rifled through PlayStation Store data to uncover the full list of launch times across its 15 regions. The unlock times range between 11am UTC on 18th November at the earliest, to 6am UTC on 19th November – a 19-hour difference.

As is common with staggered releases, New Zealand goes first. GTA 6 becomes playable there at 12am NZDT on 19th November (midnight on 18th November). Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua are the last to gain access, where the game unlocks at 12am CST on 20th November (midnight on 19th November).

Notably, the release timestamps don’t appear on the PlayStation Store pages for every country with a PS Store page. GTAVice lists Bahrain, China, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman and Qatar as all missing that information. For countries like The Philippines, Russia, Serbia and Vietnam their store pages instead redirect you to other countries’ stores.

It’s worth reiterating that your unlock time is tied to the PlayStation Store’s account region, not where you physically are in the world. For instance, if you reside in Canada but made your digital pre-order on the UK store, the game will unlock for you when it does for everyone in the UK.

We actually got reminded of that regional split shortly after pre-orders went live for the code-in-box “physical” version of the game, as multiple retailers issued warnings that codes are region-locked. Rockstar later clarified which countries are affected, and which codes can only be redeemed in the country they were bought.

Things are more interesting on Xbox, however, as the console platform allows users to switch regions and stores through the system menu, meaning copies aren’t locked to any particular region. As anyone who’s done that trick to play Call of Duty games early each year knows, of course, changing your region to New Zealand is all you need to play GTA 6 as soon as humanly possible.