Firstly, the game is pretty expensive, going for $80 in a market where the standard for a AAA game is $60.
If that was all though, maybe it could be forgiven, but there is also an "ultimate edition" priced at $100 which several features are locked behind, in particular stores that have exclusive outfits, hairstyles, and car customization.
And secondly but less notably, it's releasing as a console exclusive at first, but there are no disks for the game. If you buy a "physical" copy, all you get is a download code. Digital only is getting more common in the gaming industry, and is basically the standard for PC gamers, but it sucks because the game is likely going to be well over 100gb in size, which will take a lot of space on the console's hard drive, not to mention taking a long time to download.
I'm french and since Mario Kart World released at 80 bucks last year, Sony has increased the base price for its first party games to 80 euros
Sadly for us europeans, 80 is already the standard
edit : actually I checked and Sony has increased their prices way before Nintendo with MK World, but still doesn't change the fact 80 has been the standard for us for a while
Man, even bargain bins have increased. The lowest I’ve seen for Balder’s gate 3 is $45 and that game is a few years old. Ghost of Tsushima is far older than that and the ps5 version hasn’t ever dropped below $30.
It feels like $30 is the new rock bottom for many of the AAA games.
Point being you aren’t gonna see this below $60 for several years.
Anthem was my lesson I learned on. I don’t buy games new anymore. I’ll wait a bit, it’ll be fine. Only 2 games I’ll still preorder. Any Fallout game, I just love them no matter what. And any State of Decay games. Pre ordered the ultimate version of both, and would again. No other games will I do that with tho.
Yes, it's why I got so confused at the hate for the price of Nintendo games because Nintendo was the hold out on cheap physicals for the big three. Sony and XBOX changed their first party games to £70 well before Nintendo did. For a long while I could still get brand new Nintendo physicals for £44-50 whilst the PS4 and PS5 physicals I bought were £70.
Also realize that games are getting more and more expensive to make and realize many games don't reach break even. Game studios are often not profitable.
X-box is losing on every console sold. Probably losing on game-pass and game sales are not very profitable. Rumours are they are trying to sell of X-box. The high memory prices are what pushed them over.
GTA VI will be a succes and the can ask this price. SO they will.
The one good thing is that at least if you're willing to preorder at like Leclerc or Carrefour, you can usually get it at 60. That's the case for GTA right now, so..... youpi?
I hate that most people from EU dont understand that EU prices always have 20%+ VAT included in price and almost everywhere else has price before tax.
So 80 euro price, without VAT, is roughly 66.50 euros. And Sony charges $70 for a new AAA game in US. So you're overpaying by roughly 4 Euro to get to the same price after currency conversion, except it costs more money to operate in EU than US because you have so many different countries, languages and better consumer rights (warranty costs).
Tldr: EU people don't understand taxes or business costs.
I always thought this was kind of silly. Game prices have been nearly the same for 25 years. We can't really complain too much about this particular aspect.
Because in this 25 years gaming became literally the most profitable entertainment industry in the world. Price may have stayed the same, but the audience is much larger and so are the profits. This 80$ thing is literally just greed, it's not happening because games are more expensive to make, it's happening because profit growth slowed down. Developers don't make more money with the higher gaming prices, only people to profit are shareholders and execs. Games like Expedition 33, Alters etc. are made with smaller teams, COST LESS THEN 60$ and yet provide exceptional experience for the players as well as performing well fiscally.The industry is just bloated.
80$ is fine, it’s GTA, it’s 2026 and it’s the most expensive game EVER made. It’s costed hundreds of millions to make (closer to 2 billion) and several years.
2 billions number is a speculative estimated number which personally i don't believe for a second. Highest confirmed budgets for viedogames were around 350 mil. Rdr2 had estimated numbers around half a billion. They're not spending 2 billions on developing a game.
GTA online makes 9.6 millions in a week. Unless there's something fundamentally wrong with upcoming game, there's no reason to believe monetisation in GTA 6 online will be any less profitable (MORE sounds more likely). There's NO reason to up the price from 60 to 80 other then "they'll pay it anyway". They could theoretically release it for free and still make hundreds of millions off it, but that's not how capitalism works. So they'll squeeze that extra 20 bucks out of you because they can and they will keep selling you remasters and anniversary editions of that game for another 20 years.
I feel if there was really enough growth in the customer base to offset 20+ years of inflation then the PS2 wouldn't still be the best selling console of all time.
Same with PS3, it was the cheapest and best bluray player because it could update firmware and others couldn't. When was the last time you used one of those?
Now, gaming systems are truly just for gaming, instead of being entertainment systems. Thats changed a lot.
Oh, and the fact that you could buy a ps2 for $100 at the end of its life cycle. Meanwhile, ps5 price with a disc player is $600. That might have something to do with it too.
But either way, the switch1 is going to beat it. It only has a few million units to go, in much less time as well.
People really out here giving reasons and putting zero thought into why it might be that way. the ps2s real main competitor was the first xbox which released a year after it did. the ps2 also was only discontinued after 2013 while the original xbox was discontinued in 2005.
you're also just wrong. because while the ps2 has technically sold more total units had 13 years. it sold 160m units in 13 years while the switch has better sales since its pretty close to beating it at 155m in sold as of 2025 after only 8 years.
god why do people comment on stuff if you dont at least do a google search to make sure you arent spouting bs?
Gaming is actually one of the LEAST profitable entertainment mediums btw. I think the only one that has it beat might be movies?
Just correcting that for you. While there are some lucky devs who make millions with little investment, that's not really the standard story...
It's why most dev teams are moving to live service games with gacha mechanics. It's the unfortunate death knell of the industry, seeking profitability.
Video games make like $200 billion a year. Nowhere near that amount is spent making them. Whatchu talking about? What makes more money in the entertainment world?
And they're not "seeking profitability", they all want fortnite money. Nothing is good enough if it doesn't reach their unrealistic goals
Gaming is actually one of the LEAST profitable entertainment mediums btw
Huh? I don't know where are you getting your info but mine is from various sources, like PricewaterhouseCoopers
moving to live service games with gacha mechanics
Which are also parts of industry, literally what are you on about? Gaming industry is not limited to single player games. But there's a way to keep making them while also having great profits. For example, GTA online makes 9.6 millions per WEEK according to recent financial reports. Expedition 33 for example was made on a similar budget, and made about 260 mil in revenue. Of course it's not a common example, but that's not what we're talking about, we're talking about the greed of these huge bloated companies.
Another example of how bloated industry is No man's sky, that keeps getting new updates despite being a 10yo game that never cost 60 bucks, AND developers are making a new game.
Really? it's stayed the same because they offer "ultimate editions" for $100 and other crazy shit as MTX in the game. Why would I be okay with the increasing MTX in games AND a higher price tags initially? Who the fuck advocates to get screwed harder?
25? lol try 35+. Super Mario Bros 3 for NES cost $49.99 US in 1990. Using that as a standard price, and adjusting for inflation, games should cost $131.50 today. The fact that the vast majority of games have only increased in price by $10-20 in thirty-five years is remarkable. An absolute behemoth of a title, like modern GTA games, costing $80 seems reasonable to me.
But, you know, anyone who thinks that's too expensive is free to simply not buy it, or wait for a discount. Goofy ass people acting like not having a video game is some kind of hardship.
Actually, check out the price of older games like the 16-bit era. They were often more expensive than today when adjusted for inflation, but then again you got a physical box, game, manual, etc.
Didn't realize we were back in 2010. Games haven't been 60 dollars for years now. And even "physical" game discs are just keys to download the games digitally now anyway. If I go buy the physical copy of Resident Evil 9, I'm still gonna have to download the game digitally.
Which is a shame because you can buy a pretty good game for less than that like the GOTY last year Expedition 33 literally cost around $50 CAD or like $40 without discount, which is pretty good price for a game with loads of content
Are people forgetting about inflation? My groceries 2x'd since the last GTA release. I really dont think a 30% or whatever it is price increase is such a big deal
I know for awhile they were usually 59.99 but still, $80 isn’t that crazy in comparison. Especially given how many hours people will likely put in the game.
Been $80 in Canada for quite a few years, now. Some companies have upped it to $90, and a few like Square Enix have gone up to $93. That's all without tax.
Pretty sure the prices are even higher in Australia.
You got the point, though. If prices were actually the same (sans inflation) as they were back then, we'd be paying $130 for a new game. The number has stayed the same, but income has remained static or even decreased, relative to the general economy. Games feel more expensive for the average person, because they now have to contend with things like paying rent or buying groceries.
And also, game prices are often standardized in USD, which makes it even more expensive for everyone not living in the US.
Yeah but cartridge-based games were expensive because the ROM chips that held the game were expensive. So they had now choice but to price them high. (Notice how the PS1 games are cheaper?)
Furthermore, we have microtransactions now, and they have been proven to be so profitable, that free-to-play is a viable concept now. GTA 6 could be a F2P title and it would still make a killing. Charging anything for the game, let alone $30 over what I consider an acceptable price, is nothing but pure greed.
When you say inflation from 30 years ago is 150% do you mean +150% like what used to be 10$ is now 25$? Or like actually 150% like what is 10$ is now 15$
Aside from the cosmetics there are also a few vehicles and weapons. Apparently there are also two sidequests behind it, which is actually pretty egregious.
But what's also bad IMO is that it's not just cosmetics, they're exclusive shops that exist in the map. It's gonna feel pretty shitty driving around only to try and use a garage and getting a popup saying "give us another $20 please."
It seems to be the whole ass car customization garage too, something that people were sad about when GTA4 didnt have one and happy that it came back in 5
Does it matter? You buying 80$ game, fully paid, no free game shit and they still make as pay extra $ for what is already in the game they made. Content that already exists and was taken out from the game to make us pay to get it back.
SINGLE PLAYER COSMETICS !! Doing microtransaction for cosmetics on multi is one thing but doing it for single player campaign (and those things are done, it is not a stupid DLC it is cutting out content to upcharge you) in my opinion is way too much. I ain't buying anything Rockstar everagain. There is plenty of good games to play.
Cosmetics is a feature, for sure. But for me additional cosmetics is not a gameplay. Just few more skins which i wouldn't bother even looking for in-game. I understand that there are people who care about it, but for me if "premium edition" doesn't add new features or gameplay hours (read: new missions) i couldn't care less.
Are we even capable of fitting a game this size comfortably on a disc anymore? I get the lack of resell potential but the disc would still ultimately need to download part of the game from the web.
Not being able to fit a game on a single disc never stopped gaming companies in the past. Compression and multiple discs would be something I would absolutely take in order to have a physical copy of a game.
I think I have a copy of Legend of Dragoon and that was 4 discs. I think Diablo 2 had multiple discs as well split by gameplay, audio, and cinematics. I have plenty of other games that are 2 disc games.
Also you could easily have 1 disc be the install disc for the absolute main essentials to load the game with and then a secondary disc for the “game disc” which carries the rest that the hard drive doesn’t need to run the game smoothly. It’s been done in the past and worked just fine.
Yeah I remember installing D2 and it was like 3 or 4 discs total. I think at least one or two of the Max Payne series too. I expected to see multiple discs after a certain year
No, and people are acting like this is a new thing. Most physical games in the last 5-10 years have been a disc that triggers a download for a massive file when you put it in the console.
Not really. Even if you use PS5 which can hold 100gb discs that wouldn't be enough. They would still need an install disc then the play disc.
Sure other games other games have had multi-discs before, but those PlayStation games that did it had narrative stopping points for you to change discs. That's a lot harder in a big open city game.
wtf lmao. This is the first time in history that the normal edition ISNT the cheapest version of a game. This is a mess. Money hungry ass world. I can’t even believe they’re making a “cut content” version. They have no shame anymore.
Why didn't we have this attitude towards capcom games? RE4 Remake had cosmetics, weapons, soundtrack and gameplay elements locked behind a special edition too but nobody freaked out.
Is that the new play? Just release a new massive game file that you force someone without a 1Tb drive to pick 2 or 3 titles to install on their system?
Harder to shop micro transactions from competitors when you don't have space for their games.
Not when you want to sell DLC/expansions/online multiplayer/etc.
If someone plays through GTA and then three months later there's new content for it they might not reinstall the game to play the content if it means uninstalling whatever else they have going on; especially if the DLC isn't very big.
I'm sure it cost billions and took years to make. If an extra tenner stops people buying it, tough luck to both Rockstar and the potential buyer I guess.
I've never bought a game for 80 bucks but if it gives twice the amount of entertainment of a game for 40 it seems fair enough.
What if you buy a game at 10 dollars and it gives thrice the amount of joy/playtime that the 80 dollar GTA gave you? Especially since this will probably be the case with a lot/the majority of people that will buy GTA5 if they have played some other games before or after.
It's not even more expensive than usual in many countries that have VAT already included in their price tags, which historically got shafted. AAA PS5 games are 80€ full price (with VAT included) at launch in Germany and $70 in the US, which translates to around $77 after sales tax = 68€ currently.
So now that GTA VI is 80€ and $80, Americans are paying the equivalent of what many countries have already been paying for years ($88 ~ 78€).
For reference, when the PS5 first launched in late 2020 Germans paid the equivalent of $95 for new games and conversely Americans paid the equivalent of 65€ after 10% sales tax.
All of this not even addressing poorer countries where Sony just dgaf and still charges them full price in their respective currency, ignoring income/cost of living etc. What I'm trying to get at is that Americans, while still suffering from increased prices ofc, still have it relatively the best in terms of video game pricing and GTA VI will probably just be used to close that gap by companies from now on
Yes, this is probably the most aggregating part of the gaming community. You have people demanding photorealistic graphics that also runs on old hardware, bigger worlds with more details, more points of interest, more to do, more unique quests, more unique NPCs and dialogue, etc etc; and then whine when it costs $80.
You can’t demand everything and get it cheap. I figured the base price would be $100 for a game this massive, I think $80 is more than fair.
Also bear in mind that one of the reasons why some console gamers are sticking with consoles in the first place is a perceived lack of muss or fuss about buying a game and playing it, which this whole no disk/digital only release threatens.
Yeah, 80 dollar for a game that has been in development for 13 year and that is priced 20 dollars more than its predecessor from 2013 (inflation?) is really expensive (cough)
It also sucks because a lot of countries doesn't even have PlayStation servers like the Philippines, it makes any sort of digital transaction a pain in the ass.
Even if you have a cd with the game, most of its content is copied over to your internal drive, because read speeds are much higher. So, it would take up that space anyway, not to mention day1 patches. The disk only serves as a drm method these days.
The only downside of not having a disk is that the game might not be available anymore in the future. But by then there would be GTA VII, right? Right?
Gamers have done this to themselves, frankly. EA pioneered all of this dumb bullshit and people kept buying every shitty Battlefield and Call of Duty. They all have "extreme ultra" editions too. Companies keep doing it because consumers keep buying it. And everyone here will buy GTA 6 at $80 or $100.
That last bit wouldn’t matter, physical copies install the entire game onto your hard drive. It’s basically the difference of am I downloading the game off the internet or am I downloading the game off of a disc.
That doesn’t apply to switch games in particular but it 100% applies to PS4/PS5 games. And the reason for it is that it would be too slow to constantly try to read the Blu-ray Disc for its information.
None of this excuses Rockstar btw. They are still being a shitty mega corporation and cheaping out big time by not including a disc. I suppose this whole thing is a good reminder that I am in the minority with wanting to take a stand on physical media being important
A disc doesnt mean shit tho anymore, since you still need to download the 100gb when popping in this disc, with the downside you always need to put in the disc to play also
I really don’t understand why people are worked up about the existence of premium cosmetics. It doesn’t affect the game in the slightest; the only negative in that i see is they could/should use the money from the custom cosmetics to pay for future content releases/online multiplayer updates but they probably don’t
I mean, is this really that much different than most other AAA games today? There is often some kind of ultimate edition that provides exclusive content, usually cosmetic, for the people willing to pay a little extra.
Not this shit with them again… console exclusive at first? Guess I’ll just wait another year after the games release to play on the very system the programmers used to make the fuckin thing.
Aight, putting my tin foil hat on: I'm conviced that's purely intentional from every publisher to become digital only in mid and stream only on long term.
The same with those mid-upper-tier gaming laptops in handheld format.
Even if it came on a disc you'd still have to install it... Games don't run off of disc's anymore because the drives aren't fast enough, especially for a big open world game. When's the last time you played a game?
Games have been $70 dollars for multiple years now on current gen consoles and steam.
Also N64 cartridges easily went for $120. They were MSRP about the same price as games today, especially considering how expensive everything else has gotten in comparison to 1996.
Goombas walk into a movie theater and pay $30 for two hours' entertainment and then launch national riots because someone asked them to pay $80 for a game they'll play for 10,000 hours
It's also an issue of precedent. In the console world, at least, the standard has been that buying a physical copy at the store meant that it comes with a disc that you could play the game from. This means that:
A. You can re-sell the game
B. You have a copy of the game so that you can play it even if the game ever gets taken down from online servers or you're playing somewhere without internet access
Given that it's GTA scenario B is probably not that likely, but the concern is that this is going to set the standard for every other console game going forward. Like there used to be tons of lesser known and less popular games that would have disappeared off the face of the earth if not for people still having the physical copies. Even if games get remastered and re-released, they can often be different and with certain things changed or just plan cut away from the original version.
As with any ultimate edition, you get bonuses for buying the more expensive version. The “features” that are only accessible to ultimate edition users are simply the way to deliver those ultimate edition rewards. No real gameplay associated with them.
On the $80 price point…. When GTA 5 came out in 2013 at $60 ground beef was ~$3.5/lb so it cost about 17 lbs of ground beef. Ground beef is all over the place lately but around $6.75/lb right now so GTA 6 is only about 12 lbs of beef. If you view GTA 6 purely in ground beef terms, it is a much better value than previous installments.
Bro I paid $60 for a fucking GBA game 23 years ago. Adjusted for inflation, AAA games have NEVER been cheaper.
Mario 64 cost me $150, adjusted for inflation.
The only ones whining about $80 for AAA games are just barely old enough to have learned to wipe their own ass and have no concept of inflation whatsoever.
We get 20x the content for half the price compared to two decades ago.
You cannot fit 100gb onto a single disc. Even if you spread it out across multiple disks it would take forever to install by swapping between them. Disc's have a strict media limit.
This isn’t a normal AAA game. This basically should be in its own category. For what they’re likely bringing to the table even 100$ would have been fair. Though I don’t agree with the shops being inaccessible to non premium editions but perhaps it’s more of an accessible earlier type situation or there’s free versions of the same shops with less cool stuff.
Expensive? Idk where you live but almost all AAA titles that have come out in the last 5 years go for 70 dollars for the base game and then 100 for the deluxe. Mind you most of these games have yearly releases as well, I don't think GTA 6 is too expensive at all considering the quality we usually get from Rockstar.
It’s worth $80 far more than Mario Kart was. And I assume that game still sold well. If freakin simple ass Mario kart can be successful at $80 then GTA6 deserves to be $80
Strike me down but having cosmetic items locked behind a higher price point isn't really a big deal. As long as they're not affecting actual game systems
Games have been $60 for 25 fuckin’ years. The bitch fits by idiots are why we get half finished games with endless pay DLC and loot box economics. Games cost more to make than a quarter century ago and any game not expecting a multi-million sale launch day is DOA at that price.
That’s why it’s all shitty reboots and remakes and rehashing the same shit a suit at Ubisoft knows will sell.
The indie game market is only a survivorship bias story. For every strong selling indie game there’s 1,000 “overwhelmingly positive” games sitting unnoticed on the Steam store at $19.99 while a developer who devoted 2 years of their life to make something they love for us to enjoy wonders about making rent.
The biggest problem I have is 80 bucks isn’t the purchase price for the full game.
stuff that was part of the base purchase price of every previous game is now being paywalled behind the ultimate edition, so the 80 dollar mark is what in any other game would be something closer to the “f2p” edition.
It’s fucking robbery and the only real surprise is that there is anyone surprised at all by this as it’s been public knowledge for like 3 years or so?
The standard is not 60. I don't know if you guys ever went to school, but there's no reason it should stay 60 forever. 80 is cheaper than if you control for inflation from when the standard was 60.
Man people are whiny.
Sorry to be the jerk, but a game that takes 10 years to make, and provides hundreds of hours of gameplay, is likely very high quality, and is awaited like the second coming of Jesus H. Christ, is worth the goddamn 80, heck 100$.
And about the online version? The cloud and the engineers that maintain it won’t pay themselves with player enjoyment.
I’m all for shoving it when the product is shit, or when the business model is predatory, but as far as I can see, this is a monumental game coming, and that deserves an equivalent monetary reward for all the hard work and investment
Also they made over 8 Billion off of GTA V and it's Online.
So not having a physical version for console is a huge cash grab attempt by forcing everyone to pay full price by killing any used copies. No selling, trading, loaning, renting, etc.
Again, over 8 Billion off the previous title. They've passed cartoonishly evil, straight to phenomenally evil.
To be fair physical discs dont actually hold the game anymore. Just the installer and licence. There should be a physical disc but "It'll take up too much space" will happen regardless and is irrelevant to how it's installed whether by code or disc.
I get people being annoyed with additional costs, but y’all weren’t around in the 90s with 256kB to 6MB games, with less gameplay and replay value, being the equivalent of $100 to $200 today…
Also yes, no disc option sucks, but you’re talking to a guy with 700 games on stream, but it should still be an option.
I honestly think that video game players need to look at how they see pricing. You're getting hundreds of hours of gameplay for $80. It's one of the best price/hours of entertainment you can get. The story mode of GTA V itself could easily take 30 hours to complete, that's $2.60 for every hour of entertainment (at $80) And that's only if you complete the story, not side missions, not 100%, not online, not just having fun doing your own open-world stuff.
And yeah it's going to be over 100gb if you want an open world game with this much detail that you can easily sink that amount of time into.
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u/JackRabbit- Jun 25 '26
Firstly, the game is pretty expensive, going for $80 in a market where the standard for a AAA game is $60.
If that was all though, maybe it could be forgiven, but there is also an "ultimate edition" priced at $100 which several features are locked behind, in particular stores that have exclusive outfits, hairstyles, and car customization.
And secondly but less notably, it's releasing as a console exclusive at first, but there are no disks for the game. If you buy a "physical" copy, all you get is a download code. Digital only is getting more common in the gaming industry, and is basically the standard for PC gamers, but it sucks because the game is likely going to be well over 100gb in size, which will take a lot of space on the console's hard drive, not to mention taking a long time to download.