Grand Theft Auto 6’s potential price-point was a thing of much consternation in the lead-up to its reveal. Months of rumours—and even the Bank of America getting involved in the discourse, because why not—led to the question: Are they really gonna charge $100 for this thing?
You’re reading this article because they didn’t, but you’re also reading this article because they sort of did. See, GTA 6 has both an $80 version and a $100 version, the latter of which hides some potentially major parts of its identity behind the upgrade, including a handful of stores that may very well remind you that you’ve not shelled out every time you go near them.
There’s this itchy capitalist feeling that Rockstar probably did actually want to charge a hundo for the thing, but didn’t, because that’d have gamers up in arms—as it turns out, that might’ve been the smart play. In a recent interview with CNBC, Take-Two interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick says:
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“It’s skewing more to the premium edition, but that might be a reflection of the fact that the most avid consumers are the ones that are pre-ordering now,” Zelnick says, before adding that they’re unlikely to lower the game’s price point themselves, even if retailers might want to reduce their own margin to draw in customers:
“We preserved our pricing on Grand Theft Auto 5 for a very long time—much longer than a standard release of an entertainment property.”
Now sure—as Zelnick says, this is a case of sample size. I’d be very surprised if, writ large, most people had $100 in their pocket to shell out for a video game, even one as glitzy and prestigious as GTA 6. I reckon he’s on the money (pun intended) about more excited gamers being more likely to both pre-order and spend the extra dough.
But it very much feels like GTA 6 is, in combination with the content locked off behind that paywall, basically $100. And if what Zelnick says is true—that those sales are split down the middle with a lean towards $100—then Take-Two has effectively gotten away with charging $90 for the game’s pre-order when every last bead on the abacus is set into place.
And man, my feelings are mixed. Yes, $100 is a lot of money to spend on an entertainment product in the, uh, interesting financial times we live in. But there is the elephant in the room that the production of big-budget games like GTA 6 has absolutely outstripped inflation. Would I pay $100 for a videogame? No, even on principle. But given it took literal, actual billions to make, $100 is technically low-balling it.
You have to wonder if GTA 6 might even be part of an endangered species, now. Sure, we’ll get other Grand Theft Auto games assuming we’re all still around in 10+ years, but can an industry that’s so hungry to chase quarterly results at the exchange of all else sustain anything else of that game’s scale and budget? Probably not, but hey—maybe things’ll get healthier and less layoff-happy in a decade. One can hope.
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