Could GTA 6, the future juggernaut from Rockstar Games, be the first game to offer a basic edition for €90? Recent statements from the CEO of Take-Two are more in this direction. Too bad for the players’ wallets.
With the arrival of the new generation of consoles at the end of 2020, namely the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, we were entitled to a significant increase in the price of certain games. For good reason, while the latest titles released have been trading for several years at €70, Sony, Microsoft and other publishers/studios have decided to increase their prices.
The Japanese brand was the first to confirm an increase in the price of its PS5 exclusives. Thus, the first games of the machine like Demon’s Souls or Marvel’s Spider-man: Miles Morales were offered to €80. Two years later, Microsoft also chose to raise the price of its Xbox exclusives (also €80). As Sony explained at the time, this price increase was necessary, at a time when the development of AAA games (with big budgets) is always more expensive.
For example, God of War Ragnarok, one of PlayStation Studios’ latest blockbusters, cost a whopping 200 million dollars. We are far from the 44 million needed to develop God of War 3 on PS3. And as you probably know if you follow video game news, 2025 will be marked by the arrival of an event, if not historic, game: GTA 6.
GTA 6, the first PS5/Xbox Series X game at €90?
Rockstar’s open world, expected for fall 2025, should explode all the counters, whether in terms of playground, vehicles and weapons available, sales… And also price?
Recently, the CEO of Take-Two Strauss Zelnick, the parent company of the American studio, was questioned about the publisher’s pricing policy. Without ever directly mentioning GTA 6, the big boss addressed the general state of mind of his company when it comes to setting the price of a game:
“Look, more and more content is being made available all the time, and we’re really aiming to deliver great value at all times. We always want to offer more quality than we charge. And that’s sort of our credo. And every time we set a price, we want to make sure that it’s good news for the consumer, that the experience is far superior to the asking price. That’s the point”.
And when we know that Take-Two was one of the first publishers to pass the €80 mark on its games in 2021 with NBA 2K21, we can legitimately wonder about the case of GTA 6. Faced with the wait gigantic aroused by the title, Take-Two could perfectly estimate thatsuch a game requires a greater investment from consumers. In other words, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the base edition of GTA 6 sold at €90, which would be a first. But who better than GTA 6, the game of all superlatives, to justify a new price increase? Person.
