A report on the state of the games industry posits theories on how to improve growth, with one of them being a price hike for GTA 6.
Whether or not video games are too expensive nowadays has been a long running argument, especially after the launches of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X saw most publishers bump the prices of their biggest games up to £70/$70.
It wasn’t the most popular decision among gamers, back in 2020, especially with those who felt even £60/$60 was pushing it. But other publishers, like Ubisoft, have followed suit over the years, saying that it’s needed to account for rising development costs.
There have been arguments that even that is too low an asking price and there have been rumours before that GTA 6 could launch for upwards of $100, which would almost certainly mean £100 in the UK.
How much will GTA 6 cost?
As it stands, publisher Take-Two has yet to announce pricing for GTA 6 and likely won’t until much closer to its planned autumn 2025 release.
The common assumption is that GTA 6 would cost £70/$70, especially since Take-Two was among the first to adopt this price point, although they’ll no doubt be various special editions available at a higher price.
However, in a recent presentation about the current state of the games industry, analyst Matthew Ball claims there is ‘hope’ among some game makers that GTA 6 will cost anywhere from $80 to $100. While that’s roughly £65 to £82 in the UK, any such pricing would no doubt be converted to £80 to £100 over here.
This comes from a segment of the presentation where Ball discusses potential avenues the industry can pursue to improve its flagging growth. GTA 6 naturally gets its own section, and it’s argued that if it can be sold for $80 or more, then it would help raise prices for other games. $50 games would go up to $60, $60 games would go up to $70, etc.
Ball does stress this is only a possibility, but if any game could get away with it, it would be GTA 6. Plus, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has already said big budget video games should be more expensive depending on how long they are and GTA 6 is unlikely to be a short experience.
What’s unclear is where Ball got the figures of $100 from, as while he implies it came from other publishers the rumour of a more expensive GTA 6 has been circulating for years now, after seemingly having originated from a single, unsubstantiated tweet in 2023. Whether Ball’s publisher contacts are simply repeating a variation of that rumour is uncertain.
An industry wide video game price hike is unlikely to increase growth though, just revenue and profits. Gaming as a whole is competing with other forms of entertainment, with social media platforms like TikTok being a prime example. Making games more expensive is hardly going to make them more attractive and risks driving away regular consumers.
Plus, we’ve already seen how the bump to £70/$70 hasn’t been entirely beneficial. Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man 2 sold for that much and despite breaking sales records, it was discovered to have underperformed, which in turn led to redundancies.
Interestingly, Saber Interactive’s CEO Matthew Karch previously argued the opposite of Ball’s theory, believing that studios will find ways to reduce development costs and thus make games cheaper to buy.
There’s ultimately no telling how things will pan out for the industry in the next few years, but GTA 6’s launch will undeniably cause a massive shake-up whether it costs $70 or $100.
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
MORE: GTA 6 predicted to make over $1,000,000,000 in pre-orders alone say analysts
MORE: GTA 6 writers asked to be ‘less crude’ towards minorities says report
MORE: Newest GTA 6 report confirms GTA Online 2 will be a thing as well
