GTA 6 is the most pre-ordered game in PlayStation Store and Microsoft Store history, Sony and Microsoft say

Grand Theft Auto VI is the most pre-ordered game in the history of the PlayStation Store, Sony said on Nov. 10. Microsoft made the same claim for its own store that day, calling GTA 6 "the most pre-ordered title of all time on the Microsoft Store." Neither company gave a number.

Sony's post, published as pre-loading opened, also settles when the game unlocks: a rolling midnight launch, country by country, starting at midnight in New Zealand and moving around the world as each country reaches Nov. 19. Until now, those times came only from the store listings. Here's what both companies said, what's known about the numbers and when you can play.

What Sony and Microsoft said

Sony says the demand is why it worked with Rockstar Games to open pre-loading nine days before launch, and it urges anyone who wants to play on day one to start the download as soon as possible. The post came with a new 49-second video from PlayStation, above, on the game's PS5 features.

Microsoft's post, on Xbox Wire, makes the same appeal to pre-load early. It's also where Microsoft said GTA 6 will stream on the Xbox One from 1 a.m. Eastern on Nov. 19; our story on playing GTA 6 on Xbox One has how that works and what it costs. Neither post says how many copies the records stand for, or how they were counted.

How many pre-orders?

No one official has given a figure. Rockstar hasn't, and neither has Take-Two Interactive: in its Nov. 9 results, chief executive Strauss Zelnick said pre-orders kept reaching unprecedented levels, without a number (our story on what he said).

The closest thing to a count is an outside estimate. Analytics firm Sensor Tower put GTA 6 at 7.71 million digital pre-orders worth $751 million in early November, 74% of them on PS5. Sony's and Microsoft's records fit that picture but don't confirm the numbers. Our story on the Sensor Tower estimate explains what it leaves out.

When GTA 6 unlocks

Sony's rolling midnight launch matches what the PlayStation Store listings show. New Zealand goes first, at midnight on Nov. 19 local time, which is 6 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Nov. 18, and eastern Australia follows two hours later. US listings use one time for the whole country, midnight Eastern, which is 9 p.m. Pacific on Nov. 18. Our release time guide has every region, and our story on why New Zealand plays first explains the order.

Microsoft's post gives one Xbox time, for cloud streaming: 1 a.m. Eastern on Nov. 19. It doesn't give a time for the game on Xbox Series X|S, where the Microsoft Store listings show midnight, as on PlayStation.

The PS5 features Sony lists

• The DualSense controller's speaker, haptic feedback and adaptive triggers are used across the whole game and can be adjusted in the accessibility settings.
• In-game sound uses Tempest 3D Audio, and the PS5's SSD shortens load times.
• On the PS5 Pro, the picture is sharper through PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), Sony's upscaling, and shadows are ray-traced.

Rockstar said the same in its own post on Nov. 10, along with a 30 frames per second target on both consoles. Our story on that post has the rest, and our pre-load guide covers the download.