GTA 6 Could Bring New Era of $90+ Video Game Prices

[AleksandarK]

The video game industry may be preparing for significant pricing transformation, with the prediction that Grand Theft Auto 6 (GTA 6) could set a new precedent for game pricing when it launches in the fall of 2025. According to a recent industry analysis by Epyllion Group CEO Matthew Ball, the current standard price point of $70 for premium games is becoming unsustainable given the escalating development costs of major AAA titles. Ball suggests that GTA 6, one of the most anticipated releases in gaming history, may need to retail for at least $91 to reflect its production value. The potential price increase could have ripple effects throughout the industry, with other developers and publishers likely to follow suit. Anticipated are price points between $80 and $100 for premium titles, with cascading effects on lower-priced games that could see increases of around $10 across different price tiers.

Michael Douse, Publishing Director at Larian Studios, has voiced support for price adjustments, noting that game prices have remained relatively stagnant despite inflation. "A good company raises salaries in line with inflation so that their staff don't die or something, but games prices haven't risen with inflation. This isn't the reason the industry is in the shit for now, but it is an uncomfortable truth. On the other hand, the responsibility for a game developer is to make sure that the game they show lives up to that promise, and that investment from the player," Douse stated on X. While development costs and employee salaries have risen with inflation, game prices have seen only minimal increases. Even multimillion-dollar productions maintain the $70 price point, a model the industry now views as unsustainable.



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[Cr4zy]

Id pay more if the game was worth it, most AAA games now are disappointing and not worth their asking price.
This is definitely more in line with "Our investors would like more money so make sure we sell for more money, never mind the bugs, crashes, unfinished content, false promises or optimisation"

 

[dir_d]

I don't mind paying the money but the games MUST be worth it, it must be complete. If they want my money day one, there cannot be any of this "half broken game" stuff like what happened with Star Wars Outlaws.

 

[MrDweezil]

GTA has a crazy enough fanbase they could probably pull it off, but I'm not sure who else could. I'm practically never buying games at launch anyway, so I don't know how much of a difference it would make to me.

 

[Dirt Chip]

Haven't bought a game in 10 years or so, still I have plenty to play as free as they come.
Charge 200$ for a game if you wish, I don't care.

 

[the54thvoid]

I don't get the appeal of modern GTA. It was cool when it came out (top down), made by guys from Dundee in Scotland. The first few modern iterations were fun, but now it's no better than any other AAA regurgitated profit fodder. I think I played GTA V for a few hours but, for me, it lacked any sort of soul. I really don't see what it can do now to differentiate it from the crowd it inspired.

 

[colossusrageblack]

There were already SNES games in the 90s that were $90. I'm more amazed that video games didn't go up significantly in price starting in the Dreamcast/PS2/XBOX era. Especially now with as long as it takes to make a game. During 8bit and 16bit games era, there were games getting pumped out in months. And they still charged $50 for them.

 

[Darksword]

It has to be worth it.

You can easily spend $100.00 on a concert ticket for 3 hours of entertainment. You can easily spend $100.00 taking a family of four out to the movies for 3 hours of entertainment. A great video game can give you 50+ hours of entertainment on a single playthrough - not to mention replay value and continuous online play.

People are still playing Skyrim, GTA 5, and RDR2 many years later. When looking back, those games could probably justify a $90.00 price point given the hours of replay value.

 

[N3utro]

The problem is not the salaries, the problem is game companies taking way too long to develop games. GTA VI developpement started in 2018 after red dead redemption II was released, which means it took 6 years for a 2025 release. By that time the technology they started to develop on in 2018 is probably obsolete.

 

[AGlezB]

My current stance is to not buy any AAA title at the time of release. I'll wait for months if necessary until all the major bugs are fixed and by that that the game usually isn't full price any more. The way I see it: win-win.
I consider beta-testing to be a paid job and feel very sorry for those who can't wait because they're paying for the privilege of doing it for free.

 

[Halo3Addict]

but games prices haven't risen with inflation.

This is a little misleading. Sure, the cost to buy the game has been relatively stagnant, but studios have found other ways to increase their profits by way of DLCs, cosmetics, season passes, and just good old blatant price gouging via MTX.

Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but hardly ever pre-order a game nowadays since it's more likely it will be released a mess and have to be fixed over the ensuing months. I'll happily wait, there is no shortage of games out there.

 

[Baba]

I never understood pre-ordering. This isn't airline tickets where you have to buy in advance of you won't get a seat.

Didn't they just raise it to $70? I love games but every hobby has it's limit. I'm very content getting games that are years old. Most have huge backlogs. This is all about profit margin not salaries of developers.

I might consider paying more for a Shovel that can be used as a tool and a weapon.

Shovel

A shovel was an item introduced in the Raven's Banquet expansion for Mythic Quest. It was created by Poppy Li as an incidental part of an expansion, and intended solely for use with the new game mechanic of digging and reshaping the terrain. With days to go until launch, Ian Grimm was not...

mythic-quest.fandom.com

 

[damric]

I hate you.

But please take my money.

 

[dartuil]

not for me

 

[Prima.Vera]

I'm still trying to think of any AAA released in the past 4,5 years that is worth investing 100$ on it, but most importantly, a new video card. Seriously.

 

[BSim500]

"but games prices haven't risen with inflation."

Games prices also didn't fall 20% during the 2000s when they moved from physical (typical 50% retailer cut) to digital (typical 30% Steam cut). The publishers at the time just pocketed it all as extra profit, not even passing it onto the developers who made the games. Now factor in all those costs saved on no longer needing to master physical CD's, printed manuals, printed boxes, shipping from CD mastering company to distributor warehouse then again to retailer, having thousands of retailers in dozens of countries to deal with (different supermarkets, high street game stores, mail order companies, etc, per country) vs the hyper-centralised handful today (Steam / Epic / Microsoft), no faulty disc return shipping & replacements to deal with, no having to self-host downloadable patches on the developers website instead of letting Steam do it.

Then there's the development costs like labour partly outsourced to Asia, greater reuse / 3rd party licensing of pre-existing game engines vs the 90's era where idTech, Infinity, Aurora, Lithtech, Dark Engine, UE1, Build, Gamebryo, Source, etc, all had to be made from scratch sometimes almost one per AAA franchise, motion-cap costs have fallen to the point its cheaper to do now vs spending enough time hand-animating every character's joints / movement such that they didn't look awkward, etc. And last but not least, a lot of 1990's PC games franchises were PC only typically peaking at 10-15m sales whilst the mega-hits of today like Witcher 3 & GTA V sell nearer +50-70m because they're all cross-platform meaning massively more profit through sheer volume alone.

So the real world "fair price" cost of today's AAA games is a little more complicated than saying "If disc based PC games were $60 in 1995 when publishers took a 50% cut from 15m sales to PC-only gamers, then all games should be $120 today from taking a 70% cut from selling them to 70m PC & console gamers combined, please also ignore the shitload we make on top from DLC, micro-transactions, lootboxes, pay2win / pay2unlock 'booster packs', etc!" Not only are mega-studios not poor, they've actually never had it so good...

 

[skizzo]

I don't want games to increase, but I've made this same argument many times. Games aren't too expensive when relatively compared to games of the past. Same story I share again....

I vividly remember going to get Sonic the Hedgehog 2 when it came out! It was the one and only time I ever got a video game that wasn't a Christmas gift, I have no idea how I convinced my parents to take me to Toys R' Us to buy that lol. But I remember it being $70......and that was in 1992! That comes out to $157 in today's money when considering inflation. Of course dev teams were much, much smaller back then and overall production costs were also much smaller. So, it's a little ironic that game development has rivaled Hollywood blockbuster film budgets but prices have been most stagnant or even lowered over the years! Meanwhile movie prices keep going up last I checked. Seems like video game industry is the one that bucked the trend of their products not increasing alone with inflation, and I suspect a lot of that is due to competition of who can make the bigger game, better game, faster, for cheaper. It's good for consumers.

I doubt I would buy GTA6 when it's considered new. I usually pick these games up after they have gotten all their updates rolled out and the price has dropped. Doom: The Dark Ages is the only "big" game I am excited for and would consider buying on release right now for 2025.

 

[theouto]

The costs escalate because the industry is hell bent in pushing more and bigger. How about keeping things small for a change, that will keep costs down.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Cool...this little nugget makes the rounds again.

My reaction is the same as it always was. "The price of games has not changed" is a statement borne out of ignorance. There's about a dozen different things that have changed the economics that people don't want to discuss that all influence things. They don't want to discuss them, so they just pretend "making games" is monolithic.

1) Games are no longer a niche product, and thus have a much larger consumer base.
2) Development takes longer, so a larger amount of floating capital is needed between huge launches.
3) Delivery is getting cheaper. Not having to put boxes on shelves is a huge decrease in costs.
4) Development is getting easier. When you don't start each game with "I'm going to write an engine" it's not like you're doing a lot of the groundwork...even if that ease then makes the base education of labor more expensive.
5) Everything surrounding micro-transactions, DLC, and reuse of assets.
6) More management at all levels requires more profitability at all levels. It's expensive keeping the suits around, especially when they are the suits reporting to the suits, reporting to the suits, reporting to the investors.

That is to say most bad publishers focus on 5, 2, and 6. They forget that you shouldn't need a three deep management structure to get a game out the door, that the amount of money made post release is silly in some of these AAA titles, and that we as a whole are now all the target market, instead of the niche "nerd" market that had people in the 80's paying huge amounts for an insanely expensive cartridge, when the modern SD card is pennies of product...and media (if it was still in use) is likewise insanely cheap. Nothing like removing 90% of the physical cost of that $80 game to make is reasonable to reevaluate the cost....but no. The transition from cart to CD kept prices as static as the change from physical product to digital download.


I for one remember that Rockstar decided to screw us with the repackage of their old games...multiple ways. I also know that they stand for not supporting their stuff when it matters. If they want $90 up front, then will charge an extortionate amount in transactions (read: not micro in the slightest), they can go suck on a tailpipe.

 

[Chomiq]

I say "Fuck em". Still remember the terrible launch for RDR2 on PC where people that paid $60 for the game couldn't even run it for the first two weeks.

 

[Random_User]

This is my own view. But what people fail to realize, the notion of publishers, that "they (publishers) want to raise prices, and you gamers have to accept it, or go away". By accepting this price, people accept the the current way of things. Nothing else will change. The publishers won't raise the developer's salaries by a dime. They just asking/demanding more money for what they are doing right now. And if people accept it, the companies will get away with the current sh*t they're doing. And this will also mean that, since then, the companies will have green light for whatever further bullsh*t they want to do.

Considering that most developers ceased to optimize the games long time ago, or even care about it at all, because people line in rows to buy that hot garbage, even pre-ordering it, or beta testing it with "early access". Add the fake frames, and other soap-technologies like upscallers, and there's no incentive to do a sh*t at all. Just go and buy these hot turds. Who would care, when the money are paid.

This is exactly, what other industries do. Like the food companies, that they have to raise prices, because some components got pricey, or they will have to lower the quality, or reduce the amount, etc. Eventually, they simultaneously raise the prices, reduce the amount of products, and make the quality as garbage as possible. This is just one example, but it's so widespread among other stuff, that people got used to it. This mentality of acceptance only leads to even worse scams and greed.

 

[Upgrayedd]

I thought $60 was already expensive. If they go too high, paying adults won't pay, everything else has gone up too much without wages going up too.
Also, nobody else delivers on R* level anyways. CDPR said they were going to with CP2077, didn't even come close.
And like others have said, almost no game is polished enough to be worth the day1 asking price, waiting for a sale and patch polish is the most reasonable thing a gamer can do about high prices.

 

[Easo]

Inflation IS a thing, do people seriously think games being sold for 60 USD/EUR/GBP for like 20 years would stay like that forever?

Problem is with the quality and amount of content we get, though. Now that is where 90 USD game might be reasonable, or it might be an blatant attempt to steal your money.

 

[FierceRed]

People are still playing Skyrim, GTA 5, and RDR2 many years later. When looking back, those games could probably justify a $90.00 price point given the hours of replay value.

Sure sure, yet an hourly measurement of how some people continue to play games years later, does not a present market argument make.

Should I pay a corporation more money yesterday because modders may potentially expand and extend my enjoyment of a product tomorrow?

As usual, the market will decide what is acceptable to enough consumers in the here and now. For Discerning Customers™ this isn't even a tremor in the landscape.

The problem is not the salaries, the problem is game companies taking way too long to develop games.

Ehhh, sort of. Video games are pretty much magically working disasters that require lots of effort and luck to pull off. Developers themselves say this. New tools and technologies come out and artists who want to try them (with speedbumps) are balanced against suits that want to pay for it for a profit.

For us, length of time is the wrong measurement. It's more about efficiency in the industry with advancing technology. A nuclear reactor takes way longer to build than a coal power plant but in exchange you get <InsertBarRaisingGameHere>.

If building a better game takes more time, so be it. That's a suit's problem.

Our problem is what are we willing to pay for it and when? And we solve that problem for every game ever, always.

My current stance is to not buy any AAA title at the time of release. I'll wait for months if necessary until all the major bugs are fixed and by that that the game usually isn't full price any more. The way I see it: win-win.

I see you've played Discerning Customers™ before!

I'm very content getting games that are years old. Most have huge backlogs. This is all about profit margin not salaries of developers.

Correct.

 

[damric]

They should sell a bobo version of GTA6 for like $20 for all of these tards that won't get a job. With said bobo version, instead of driving cars, you only get to either walk or pedal a bike. Instead of getting your own house, you will have to live in Mom's basement, no fancy clothes, ect.