A PlayStation 5 emulator just ran the console version of Grand Theft Auto V on a PC at up to 60 frames per second. It is both a genuine technical milestone and a wonderfully pointless one. KytyPS5, the most prominent of the experimental PS5 emulators, has gone from booting GTA 5's menus in July to actually playing the North Yankton prologue this month, with footage shared by user BrutalSam showing it running between 40 and 60 FPS on very high-end hardware.
Unfortunately, it doesn't last. The game crashes within a few minutes, usually right around the police encounter that closes the prologue, and the visuals are a mess of flickering assets and broken lighting. This is early, unstable, proof-of-concept stuff, running only on a rig with a Ryzen 9 9950X3D and an RX 7900 XT.
Where GTA V on KytyPS5 stands
Aspect | Status |
|---|---|
The build | The native PS5 version, not the decade-old PC port |
What runs | The North Yankton prologue, at roughly 40 to 60 FPS |
Stability | Crashes within minutes, often at the police encounter |
Visuals | Unstable, with flickering assets and lighting glitches |
Hardware | High-end only, like a Ryzen 9 9950X3D and RX 7900 XT |
The state of the PS5-version emulation as of the September 5 demo.
The reason anyone is impressed is the speed. In July, KytyPS5 could barely reach GTA 5's main menu. Two months later, it is rendering real 3D gameplay, and since GTA 5's cutscenes are not baked video but run live on the game's engine, getting even the intro working is a real feat. Several other PS5 games have hit 60 FPS on the emulator too, so this is not a one-game fluke.
Now, for the obvious and huge caveat. There is close to zero practical reason to do any of this. GTA 5 has run on PC for over a decade. Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced is by all means the best version of the best-selling Grand Theft Auto and the game is well optimized enough to run that modern phones can handle it just fine. Nobody needs the janky, crash-happy PS5 version. So, why bother?
The only reason this is really news is because of Grand Theft Auto VI. Rockstar Games has not confirmed a PC version, and going by GTA 5's timeline, an official one probably will not show up until late 2027 or 2028, roughly a year after the console launch. If PS5 emulation keeps moving this fast, maybe you could boot GTA 6 on PC before Rockstar ships it there properly, right as PS5 hardware sells out on the hype.
It's a pipe dream, for sure, but you can't really bet against the GTA community when it comes to stuff like this. These are the same people who put portals in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and are implementing GTA V-style character switching in Grand Theft Auto IV.
Just don't hold your breath. Getting a 12-year-old game's intro running is a galaxy away from stably emulating one of the most demanding games ever built on hardware it was never designed for. The people covering this are blunt about this. They want to make it clear that a playable GTA 6 through emulation is still far, far away. An official PC port would almost certainly beat it there, and it might never happen if Rockstar's lawyers get a whiff of this.
So enjoy the milestone because it's genuinely a scrappy community proving PS5 emulation can do the impossible-looking, and fast. Just do not, for a second, believe that a shortcut to playing GTA 6 on PC is coming anytime soon. For now, the PS5 version of a game you can already play better on PC is running badly on PC, and somehow that is genuinely exciting.