Grand Theft Auto VI, the eighth mainline installment of Rockstar Games’ action-adventure series, should be priced at $80—or $100, even—as a way of driving growth in the video games industry, according to an extensive report titled The State of Video Gaming in 2025 that investment analyst and researcher Matthew Ball shared today, one that comprises 219 slides covering topics that relate to consoles, PCs, and more.
“There is hope that Take-Two will price GTA VI at $80 or even $100, thereby breaking a key price barrier and enabling the rest of the market to move up, too,” Ball writes in a section examining potential “growth engines” for the games industry, a recommendation apparently driven by the success of GTA: V, a game that has sold 205 million copies since its initial release in September 2013.
“GTA VI’s impact on player hours and revenues will be mixed as it launches console-only and severely cannibalizes hours/spend that would go to other titles,” added Ball in another slide.
“Grand Theft Auto VI continues our efforts to push the limits of what’s possible in highly immersive, story-driven open-world experiences,” Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games, said in December 2023 when Take-Two announced that GTA VI would be coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S in 2025. “We’re thrilled to be able to share this new vision with players everywhere.”
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →Yeah, that will surely turn around the trend of games not selling.
You know what will turn that around. Stop giving away games to players where they have a titanic backlog of free or nearly free games to play on PC.
Oh you meant console. Well... hell I don't know maybe make the subs have limited time runs of game play times for new release games where after that limited run you have to buy it to play it. Examples.. 4 hours in Hogwarts Legacy for anyone on the fence but a little interested would = a purchase. AND it would make the subs more valuable to the console marketplace.
I think subscription services are damaging to the industry. But investors love them because it is a calculable stable income. You are not dependent on the failure / success of individual games. But this also means individual games become just "content" and success or failure is no longer a priority. All that matters is that there is always content being added, reducing everything to slop.
Competition is hard, and in games its been red hot for decades. Dont think theres a single thing to point out, ( as far as pricing and business models such as subscription, so on, theres simply plenty of everything in games) its just pure tough competition. I will point out the bloated budgets and celebrity voices for no reason, other than brass wanting to get invited to diddy parties and such.
I wonder how many copies of this game you would sell at $40??? Mr Analyst man??? Charging more money doesnt make a game better, Id say in fact the opposite effect. That and Im sure a boat load of GTA V was sold when the game was in the "on-sale" slot for 9.99 or less. So yeah, raise the price of gasoline.....people will drive more.....
They can give ethe game away for free and recoup their investement and then some from mtx alone for the online component
I don't really care about GTA but this is still interesting.
If any game could get away with a $100 sticker price, it would be GTA. There are plenty of folks that will buy it just because it's another GTA game, and there hasn't been a new release in 12 years.
And everyone will cry that it's the death of the industry. But there are only a very few number of very popular IPs that could get away with that right now. Other games that try to pull that off will quickly find themselves resorting to deep sale discounts just to move sales at all, I think. A lot of titles are doing that already... heck, it only took Kill the Justice League what - 4 months to go from $70 to Free.
It's also equally true that Rockstar could give the game away for free and make just as much money via the MTX - @Denpepe is absolutely correct I think.
So what that means:
I'm not so sure about the "it's GTA, it can get away with anything!" sentiment. A few months ago we thought Dragon Age can get away with anything, and now it is projected to have 3 million lifetime sales. I hope I don't have to elaborate on how abysmal that is.
COD is also loosing players, just as Battlefield or Overwatch. So no, I don't think the mantra "it's so and so big name and as such it can get away with anything" holds true any longer.
COD is losing players because they regurgitate the same garbage every year with a different name and do absolutely nothing about cheating. Then they make one post about them banning 20,000 cheaters as if that's something to be proud of....meanwhile, PUBG bans 100,000+ weekly. Every time I fire up COD in 3 out of 5 rounds I encounter a cheater. It's pathetic.
That just proves my point. Name won't save your game if you cross the players. And I think charging $100 for a game ticks that box. Not to mention the rumblings about GTA going politically correct with VI.
I mean, when we say GTA is a thing...
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.radiotimes.com/technology/gaming/gta-5-sales-numbers-revenue/[/URL]
It's not the top-grossing IP of all time, but it's got enough sales to definitely raise some eyebrows. It's beating out (vis a vis revenue) some pretty big names, like Lord of the Rings (the entire IP, not just a game or movies), all the DC universe movies, the Madden NFL line, all of the Halo titles (combined)
[URL unfurl="true"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises[/URL]
I'm kinda shocked at the top of that list to be honest. I guess it explains why Nintendo is willing to do some of the things they do, when you beat out Mickey Mouse.
I honestly have no idea what people like about nintendo. Is it their lame, childish games, or their sub-par console hardware, or their famous fan hating lawsuits that endears them to people?
But even nintendo couldn't get away with some things, like charging royalties for let's play videos.
Not surprised at pokemon, its just a safe bet for parents to get their kids. Nintendo in general is, thats why they remain, and the fact that as a company they are willing to eat slow years and not mass layoff and crap like this as far as I know.
Theres a color for everyone, so its pointless to argue games preferences, but is hard to say otherwise to the fact that nintendo games are good enough for mass appeal to kids and adults.
One clear distinction is the fact that they remain willing to not play it 100% safe with hardware. You want the same box + game pad, get sony, its been box + gamepad since 1995, hell the game pad has been the same.
Thank nintendo for shoulder buttons.
For re introduction of analog sticks in the way they are around still.
Thanks rumble pack.
Thanks dual screen with touch.
And so on.
Yes I know they dont exist in a vaccum, tech and ideas are around in some forms and such, but nintendo has always been serious about pushing and attempting new ways of doing things, some now are just the norm.
If Atari had survived, we would have perhaps an even more agressive innovator in all kinds of things, but atari did not survive very sadly.
I still fully expect the switch 2 to go hard with streaming using nvidias tech, allowing whatever powerful / intensive game you want to run, provided good internet. It makes so much sense, they can keep up with really any hardware, without the hardware.
Oh yeah, they are massive AH about lawfare, dont know how that could be cured.
Also thanks to them for the DPad.
The only thing I find wild about all of that is the fact that GTAV has 8 and a half billion dollars in sales compared to the entire GTA franchise's 10 billion dollars.
The first "4" games (there are more than just 4 but you get what I'm saying) combined for less than 2 billion dollars.
However, let's compare it to those games that do release a new version nearly every year. Such as COD franchise sitting at $31 billion dollars combined. Could the GTA franchise be much higher than what it is today IF they released a new "version" more frequently. In the same way that COD does.
What if they released games similar to Pokemon? The first dozen or so games on Pokemon were basically the same, tried and true formula. Just different names, different towns and new pokemon added to the games.
What if GTA just built a new city to explore with different, but similar missions with just different character names each time?
I mean it's hard to argue doing almost nothing and earning 8+ billion dollars over a 12 year span; but I think they could have made even more if they invested that money into new GTA games sooner rather than later.