GTA 6 early download has fans more divided than ever

Fancy getting your hands on Grand Theft Auto VI early? Well, the best I can offer is a pre-pre-load.

If you venture on over to the Xbox Store, you can actually partially download GTA VI.

When I say ‘partially’, I mean a minuscule selection of files.

If you’ve seen images circulating of Xbox users’ consoles with GTA VI ‘installing’, it’s this pre-load to a later pre-load that you’ll have seen.

To get it yourself, you simply need to find GTA VI on the Xbox Store and hit download.

What’ll download is a 328.76MB file that essentially prepares your console for the installation of the full release come May 2026.

That’s literally it. You don’t get access to anything from the game.

Once downloaded, GTA VI will sit on your home screen as a game tile which is pretty cool, but opening it up will just prompt the game’s key art to show for a few seconds.

That begs the question: is it worth downloading?

My personal take is no. Like I said, it’s cool to have GTA VI on your home screen, but no one needs pre-installation files at this stage.

Heck, pre-orders aren’t even open yet. This is the type of thing I’d maybe download in April 2026.

Fellow fans have their own thoughts though.

“It’s almost a year away, why have it sitting there doing nothing?” asked Reddit user lecterrkr.

“Because some of us have space to spare,” offered Dizzy_Winner4056.

“Why would you download a game that doesn’t come out for a year? Makes zero sense. Even w horrible wifi you could do this two weeks out,” added Tomato4377.

Apparently this may now be possible on PlayStation 5 too, although I haven’t tested that out myself.

Given how small this file is, it may be useless but there’s no harm in downloading it so I say do whatever you fancy.