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How Much Will GTA 6 Cost?

GTA 6

GTA 6 is one of the most anticipated games to be released in recent memory, but there’s still so much we don’t know about it, including its price. So, while many gaming personalities choose to spew baseless rumours across the net, we will instead get down to brass tacks and see if we can figure out the cost of this title.

How Much Will GTA 6 Cost Consumers?

No, GTA 6’s Base Edition Is Not Going to Be £150!

Recently, a rumour circulated saying that GTA 6 will cost £150 when it releases. But if we take a step back and look at the bigger picture, the publication that reported this was probably talking about a yet-to-be-announced collector’s edition of the game.

These days, nearly every tent-pole release comes with a bevvy of special and collector’s editions, so it’s hard to believe that GTA 6 will be any different. Plus, when you consider the prices of titles on PS5 and the current Xbox consoles, none are over £70 unless they include some extra content.

GTA 6

So, while Rockstar Games could flip the script and raise the price exponentially out of nowhere, this rumour is likely baseless and misplaced.

Cost Per Hour? Take-Two’s CEO’s Quote Taken Out of Context

In a November 11, 2023 interview, Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two’s CEO, discussed the value the Grand Theft Auto franchise brought consumers. However, these comments were later taken out of context as people alluded to the idea that GTA should have a per-hour pricing structure or be priced higher than similar games.

On November 17, Take-Two later clarified that Zelnick was merely talking about the value he thought GTA 6 would possess, as the video game will contain hundreds of hours of content packed within a single game.

GTA 6

Though arguably verbose, in the interview, Zelnick said, “The algorithm is the value of the expected entertainment usage, which is to say that the per-hour value times the number of expected hours.”

This essentially points to the fact that the cost of Grand Theft Auto 6 is more affordable than other entertainment mediums when considering the per-hour value people get from games like Grand Theft Auto.

Looking Back at the Launch of GTA 5

To get an idea of how much GTA 6 might cost, a good source is the launch of GTA 5, which came out on September 17, 2013, at the price of £69.99 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. After pre-orders started a few months earlier, GTA 5 launched with three versions: the base game, the special edition, and the collector’s edition, with the prices of all three being £59.99, £79,99, and £149.99, respectively.

Since then, most AAA games have adopted the £69.99 base price for their titles rather than the £60 standard set in 2013.

GTA 6

Looking at the bonuses and extra editions that came with that game may provide a better idea of what to expect for Grand Theft Auto 6. In 2013, the GTA 5 Special Edition included a collectable steelbook with artwork, a blueprint map, and in-game items, including weapons, additional tattoos, trials and bonuses. The GTA 5 Collector’s Edition, which cost £149.99 at launch, included a physical bag with a special lock, a GTA cap, unique in-game vehicles and a garage.

Because of this, it is more than likely that GTA 6 will launch with a collector’s edition that costs significantly more than the base game, but that standard edition will still be priced at the expected £70. Whether or not you agree with the pricing is up to you, but at least we answered some of these questions in the lead-up to the latest Scarface-lookin’… or, uh, we mean the title set in Vice City.

How Much Will It Cost Rockstar to Make GTA 6?

Finally, let’s examine the cost of making this game for Rockstar and Take-Two.

The last entry was the most expensive game ever made at its release, costing around £265 million to make. With a world three times the size of its predecessor, it’s easy to see why. Then, following that, Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 took the crown of the most expensive video game title ever to be produced, at a cost of around £600 million or so.

When you consider those two factors and how it’s likely that the developer will want to push the boundaries of storytelling, graphics, and even gameplay, it seems safe to assume that GTA 6 will take the crown of the most expensive game ever produced.

GTA 6

But exactly how much are we talking about here?

Well, with GTA 6 releasing in the modern day, it stands safe to reason that Grand Theft Auto 6 will cost close to a billion to ship out. Of course, this is all speculation, but as budgets balloon, gamers expect more and more out of their products, and marketing gets even crazier; this could be the big one.

Is this sustainable? Probably not, but with Rockstar only releasing its primary entries at around a rate of one or two per console cycle, they can at least work their hardest to polish them and hopefully treat their employees better along the way.

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