Opinion: This time next month, you will have been playing GTA 6 for days, and I have some predictions about the state of you

Heads up: the dates below are real and sourced. The predictions are mine, and I will not be taking questions about them on December 1, when several of them turn out to be wrong and I pretend I never wrote this.

Today is October 25. Add a month and you get November 25. On November 25, GTA 6 will have been out for six days in the Americas, and a little longer in New Zealand, which gets it first on the 18th because time zones are a scam that favours sheep farmers.

Six days. That is not "a few people have started it". That is a week of millions of grown adults calling in sick, missing meals and telling their partners they are "nearly done with this mission" for the fourth hour running. I have already written about the sick days. I stand by every word, and I will be taking one. Possibly three. My manager reads this site, so: hello, I have a cough.

We have been waiting for this since the first trailer. People have had children in that time. Those children can now walk. Some of them have opinions about Lucia. In thirty days, the wait ends, and a new problem starts: actually having the thing.

So here is my forecast for the state of you, this time next month.

A confession, before I get smug

Until recently, I did not own a PlayStation. I had one once. It went the way of all my consoles: under the telly, then in a cupboard, then to a nephew who has never given it back and now denies it ever existed.

Then Rockstar gave us a release date and, you may have noticed, no PC version. So I did the thing I swore I would never do. I walked into a shop, as a grown man, and bought a PlayStation 5 for one game. The person at the till asked if I wanted anything else with it. I said no. She looked at me the way you look at someone buying a single lemon at midnight.

Nobody forced me. Well. Rockstar forced me. The receipt is stuck to my fridge, so I have to look at it every time I want cheese. I have started wanting less cheese. In a way, GTA 6 has already improved my life.

I have not bought a single other game for it. I do not know where the PlayStation Store is. I have not made an avatar. My profile picture is the default one, and it looks as disappointed in me as I am. The console has one job, and its job starts on November 19. Until then it sits under the telly, humming quietly, like a dog that knows it is going to the vet.

So when I am rude about PC players below, understand that I am not looking down on you. I am a man who was very nearly one of you, got dragged across the line kicking and paying, and would now like some company in his misery. You can't have any. That's the joke.

Day one to day six: what happens to all of us

You will not have finished it. Nobody finishes a Rockstar game in six days unless they have no job, no family and no respect for the work. You will be somewhere in the middle, emotionally attached to a car you stole by accident, and you will defend that car's honour in a way you have never defended a real person.

You will have been spoiled. Not by me. By a stranger, a thumbnail, a headline, or your cousin who "only played a bit" and then described the whole second act at a birthday party. The internet is a minefield with a comments section. If you want the story clean, mute "Jason" and "Lucia" now, and accept that a radio advert in a petrol station will still tell you something.

You will have opinions about the radio. Strong ones. Unreasonable ones. You will defend a station you would never listen to in real life, and you will be right. Someone at work will disagree with you. You will not speak to them again.

You will have driven into the sea at least once. On purpose. To see what happens. We all know what happens. We do it anyway. It is the closest thing this hobby has to a religion.

You will have spent real time on nonsense. Fishing. Taking photos of alligators. Standing outside a Burger Shot doing the maths on a $28 meal. This is the correct way to play a Rockstar game, and it is why your story progress is so embarrassing. Check your completion percentage on day six. Then look away. Then look back. It will still say 9%.

You will have said "one more mission" at 1am and meant it. You will play three more missions. You will go to bed at 4. You will be at work at 9, telling a colleague about a pelican. They will not care about the pelican. You will tell them anyway.

And a moment of silence for PC players

Not a long one.

Confirmed: GTA 6 launches on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Rockstar has announced no PC version. Not "later", not "in the works", nothing. Just silence, which is Rockstar's favourite language.

So on November 25, while the rest of us are six days deep and arguing about radio stations, PC players will be doing what they always do with a new Rockstar game: watching. Watching clips. Watching streams. Watching us post blurry photos of our tellies like it is 2004, then telling us the frame rate looks bad. It does. We are busy. Leave us alone.

Now, history. GTA V reached PC 19 months after it came out on consoles. Red Dead Redemption 2 took about a year. If GTA 6 follows either pattern, PC players get it somewhere between late 2027 and the summer of 2028. By then the rest of us will have finished it, platinumed it, and moved on to complaining about the next one.

I am told that PC players are the "master race". I am told this often, and loudly, usually by someone explaining their graphics card to me unprompted, in a voice usually reserved for describing a newborn. This November the master race will be getting its news from the console peasants. The peasants will be in Vice City. The master race will be in a YouTube comments section, typing "60fps when" into the void. I would like to say I feel bad about that. I have checked, and I do not.

To be fair, and I am occasionally fair, usually by accident: they will get the better-looking version eventually, with higher frame rates, ultra settings and a fix for whatever Rockstar broke. They always do. They will just get it when we are bored of it, like a younger sibling getting your old bike.

Now the small print

Things I am confidently predicting that Rockstar has not actually told anyone:

• The unlock times. Rockstar has not published a schedule. We have our best reading of it, but midnight in your region is still a guess. Plan to be awake. Plan to be disappointed. Plan to stay awake anyway.
• The install size. Not announced. Figures from 200 GB to "the whole of your console" are circulating. Rolo says clear 200 to 250 GB before pre-load on the 12th. Rolo is usually right, which is annoying. My PS5 has nothing else on it, so for once in my life I am the organised one.
• The reviews. A report says the review embargo lifts on November 18. Rockstar hasn't confirmed it. By November 25 the scores will be old news, and everyone will have decided the critics were wrong, whatever the critics said. A 10 will be "paid for". A 9 will be "a hit job". This is how we live now.
• A day-one patch. Nobody has announced one. I would bet my lunch on one existing. My lunch is not a source. My lunch is a sandwich.
• GTA Online on GTA 6. Not at launch. Rockstar has presented GTA 6 as single-player. So on November 25, if your mates are all in Vice City and you want to play together, you will have to go back to Los Santos and my pumpkins. On a PS4, in my case, if my nephew ever gives it back.

My verdict

This time next month, the waiting is over and the arguing has started. The game will be bigger than you have time for, funnier than the trailers let on, and broken in at least one way that becomes a meme by the weekend. I am predicting a floating car. There is always a floating car.

You will be tired. You will be behind. You will be happy. I will be all three, plus slightly poorer, with a receipt on my fridge to prove it.

Unless you are on PC, in which case: see you in 2028. We will save you a seat. We will not save you from spoilers.

If you have not sorted out your launch week yet, the launch guide has every date, and my own launch-day plan has a list of excuses you are welcome to borrow. I am using most of them. Some of them twice.