There were apocalyptic posts about a viral screenshot that claimed impending Jesus-era scapegoat Grand Theft Auto VI would demand an enormous 676.7GB of storage on Xbox.
At first glance, the image seemed convincing; it was fake. No install size for the game was ever listed by either Rockstar Games or the official Xbox Store, and there are very good technical reasons the number never added up.
What the viral Xbox Store image falsely claimed
The image in circulation claimed to be an Xbox Store listing showing a specific “Requires 676.7GB” message for GTA VI.
It went viral on X, amassing thousands of reactions and horrified responses. For a lot of people, that screenshot served as a wake-up call on some of the aspects of contemporary game bloat and console storage limitations.
A swift reality check douses the panic. There is no file size information available on the official store listing for GTA VI. That exclusion isn’t unusual for a title that’s still several months from release. Storage requirements are typically locked down toward the end of development by publishers, while storefronts refresh around launch or when preloads go out. In other words, no one was there to vouch for the number.
Why the claimed 676.7GB GTA VI install doesn’t add up
Start with the hardware. The size of the PS5’s 825GB SSD (roughly 667GB available to users after system software) has been well publicized by reviewers and owners. The Xbox Series X manages around 802GB of usable storage on its 1TB drive, and the Series S leaves about 364GB available. A 676.7GB install would leave barely any room on a PS5 and outright fill a Series S, an unrealistic goal for any mass-market release.
Then look at precedent. Even the fattest mainstream releases top out at well under 200GB. Call of Duty installs alone have topped 100GB on consoles, depending on content packs and modes, which even forced Activision to issue public clarifications when those estimates rose beyond that figure. At launch, Starfield was about 126GB on Xbox. Forza Motorsport is around 130GB on Series X. Red Dead Redemption 2 floats in and around the mid hundred-and-twenties depending on how you play it. Flight Simulator itself, with world updates, can exceed 100GB; that ecosystem doesn’t even approach cutting it for consoles.
Modern compression and streaming pipelines also undermine this argument. Platform-level solutions like Sony’s Kraken and developer-used tools like Oodle Texture also play their part, alongside granular content packs and smarter texture streaming in bringing down on-disk sizes. Rockstar’s next-gen RAGE has been around so long that you can be confident their focus on high-fidelity assets will extend to the forthcoming title, but every single consideration—player convenience, download time, patch size, and the guidelines laid down by platforms—is running aggressively against a multi-hundred-gig monolith.
How storefront misinformation spreads before big launches
False storefront screenshots are easy to create and difficult to debunk in real time. 676.7 has a meme-friendly symmetry that seems believable at first glance. The more important problem is that store pages are a moving target: they gain fields, lose placeholders, and change the week before launch. That fluidity allows out-of-context or edited images to pass as early “leaks.”
We’ve seen this cycle before. Late in 2023, the news cycle was occupied by confused gasps about a 200GB-plus Call of Duty install after Activision clarified how shared data bundles distend estimates. As regular as clockwork, platform holders and publishers advise that initial sizes are preliminary and subject to change when compression passes, day-one patches, or modular downloads come into play. But without an announcement from Rockstar or the platform storefront, a claimed GTA VI size is still speculation.
What plans to trust before GTA VI preloads and launch
For the final word, turn to Rockstar’s official outlets and the console storefronts when preordering and preloading take effect. Microsoft and Sony refresh storage fields once they have actualized data, and those are the figures that your system will actually pull down.
Practical verification helps too. You can compare any suspicious images to the current store page, check typography and layout against other listings in general, and look for well-known players that could be confirmed by reviewing legit sources or platform support data. If a claim is going to require millions of players to update their storage on day one, clear communication from the involved companies will follow.
Bottom line: GTA VI will be big—Rockstar builds enormous, asset-heavy worlds—but nothing in today’s console ecosystem suggests a 600GB-class install. “Everything existed somewhere on the web (in rare cases, in small or esoteric regions), whether it was legitimate leaks/sources or simulator noise but there’s billions of pages of this info and it’s often difficult to find,” Ross says.
