Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA VI), scheduled for release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, is anticipated to be one of the largest and most data-intensive games ever produced for current-generation consoles. With the disc-installation footprint of recent open-world titles routinely exceeding 100 GB, and with day-one patches, post-launch updates, and the eventual Grand Theft Auto Online (GTA Online) successor expected to compound this footprint substantially, console storage expansion has moved from a luxury to a near-necessity for many players. This report examines the official external and expandable storage pathways supported by Sony's PlayStation 5 (PS5) and Microsoft's Xbox Series X|S, the technical constraints those pathways impose, and the practical implications for running GTA VI directly from expansion storage at launch.
A defining design pillar of the ninth console generation is the replacement of mechanical hard disk drives with custom NVMe solid-state drives (SSDs) coupled with dedicated hardware decompression blocks. Sony's PS5 ships with an 825 GB (later 1 TB on Slim disc-drive units and 2 TB on the Pro) custom PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD delivering 5.5 GB/s of raw bandwidth and a typical 8–9 GB/s decompressed throughput via its Kraken and zlib decompression unit (Wikipedia, 2026a). Microsoft's Xbox Series X|S use a custom WD SN530-derived NVMe SSD over a PCIe 4.0 x2 link delivering 2.4 GB/s raw and up to 4.8 GB/s compressed via the BCPack and zlib blocks that form part of the Xbox Velocity Architecture (Wikipedia, 2026b).
Because GTA VI is being engineered for these I/O profiles, Rockstar's streaming systems for Vice City's geometry, traffic, NPCs, and audio will assume guaranteed minimum read performance. Any external storage solution that fails to meet that minimum cannot be used to run PS5- or Series-native games directly — only to archive them — which is the central reason the platform holders enforce strict expansion specifications.
Sony enabled the PS5's internal M.2 expansion slot through a system software update in September 2021 following a public beta (Wikipedia, 2026a). To be supported, an M.2 SSD must meet a specific set of requirements published by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE, 2026):
Once installed and formatted, the M.2 SSD functions as a first-class storage pool: PS5 games can be downloaded directly to it, updated on it, and launched from it, with performance that Sony itself notes will "not necessarily" exactly match the internal Ultra-High Speed SSD even when the drive exceeds 5,500 MB/s sequential read (SIE, 2026). This caveat is critical for GTA VI: while the game is expected to be playable from a compliant M.2 SSD, edge cases such as fast-travel transitions or dense traffic streaming may show marginally longer hitching than from the internal drive. Sony explicitly recommends moving any title exhibiting issues back to internal storage (SIE, 2026).
USB-attached external storage (up to 8 TB) is also supported on PS5, but with a fundamental limitation: PS5-native games stored on a USB drive cannot be launched from it. They must be copied back to either internal SSD storage or M.2 SSD storage before play (Wikipedia, 2026a). Only PS4 backward-compatible titles can run directly from USB storage. For GTA VI on PS5, this means a USB SSD is useful only as a "cold storage" archive — practical for swapping the game in and out while travelling, but not as a runtime location.
Microsoft took a different approach to expansion. Rather than exposing the internal NVMe slot to consumer drives, Xbox Series X|S use a proprietary Storage Expansion Card slot on the rear of the console that delivers performance functionally identical to the internal SSD. The card uses the same PCIe 4.0 x2 NVMe interface and Velocity Architecture pipeline, allowing Series-native games — including those built around DirectStorage and Sampler Feedback Streaming — to run from the expansion card with no performance penalty (Wikipedia, 2026b).
The expansion cards were initially manufactured exclusively by Seagate at 1 TB; 512 GB and 2 TB Seagate variants followed in late 2021, Western Digital began producing officially licensed cards in June 2023, and 4 TB Seagate cards arrived in June 2025 (Wikipedia, 2026b). The 4 TB option is particularly relevant for GTA VI buyers because it provides headroom for the base install plus expected multi-tens-of-gigabyte updates, the eventual online component, and other large titles such as Call of Duty installations that can co-reside on the same card.
As on PS5, USB external drives (up to 16 TB at launch, with that ceiling slated for removal in 2025) are supported on Xbox Series X|S, but Series-native games must reside on the internal SSD or an expansion card to be playable. USB storage can hold them temporarily and can run backward-compatible Xbox One, Xbox 360, and original Xbox titles directly (Wikipedia, 2026b). For GTA VI specifically, this restriction means an Xbox Series X|S player wanting to play directly from non-internal storage has effectively one official path: a licensed Seagate or Western Digital expansion card.
Bringing these facts together yields a clear set of expectations for GTA VI launch storage planning:
GTA VI's storage demands will sit comfortably within the official expansion frameworks of both ninth-generation consoles, but the two platforms diverge in user-facing experience. Xbox Series X|S offers a "set-and-forget" expansion card that behaves indistinguishably from the internal drive — at a price premium per gigabyte — while the PS5 offers a more open and price-competitive M.2 NVMe market in exchange for tighter installation requirements and the possibility of marginal performance variance. In both cases, generic USB external SSDs remain restricted to archival use for the current-generation native build of GTA VI. Players preparing for launch should size their expansion solution for at least 1 TB of additional space and, on PS5, verify Gen4x4 compliance, the 5,500 MB/s recommended read speed, and a properly sized cooling structure before purchase.
Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) (2026) How to add an M.2 SSD to a PS5 console. Available at: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps5-install-m2-ssd/ (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2026a) PlayStation 5. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_5 (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2026b) Xbox Series X and Series S. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Series_X_and_Series_S (Accessed: 14 May 2026).