Warhorse co-founder Martin Klima wants GTA 6 to “blaze a trail” for higher game prices. Klima claimed triple-A games face an existential problem, with audience sizes plateauing, brick and mortar retail basically dead (“We destroyed retail, and we took all their money,” he said), and no new revenue streams to support the growing costs of making a big game.
Klima claimed that GTA 6 developer Rockstar and parent company Take-Two are in a unique position as the only companies “who can afford, or who can dare, to increase the price of games, which I think is long overdue and also necessary for this business to survive.
“The last thing you can do is to increase the unit price,” Klima continued. “That would help a lot, but everybody’s scared to death about it. Now, hopefully, GTA will blaze the trail, and it will allow us to increase the cost.”
These comments come from an interview with PC Gamer, during which Klima admitted that GTA 6 “doesn’t appeal to me at all” despite the series’ popularity. “I am not going to be playing GTA 6 unless I’m somehow forced to,” he said. “And the reason why it is so popular — it beats me. It’s something which I just fail to understand.”
In the U.K., GTA 6 is priced £69.99 for the Standard Edition, which is pretty typical for a tentpole triple-A release. However, in the U.S. it’s $79.99 for the Standard Edition, 10 dollars higher than the usual price point of a new game. The Ultimate Edition, which includes in-game content most players will want, costs $99.99.
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick previously commented on GTA 6’s price speculation, saying: “Consumers pay for the value that you bring to them, and our job is to charge way way way less of the value delivery. How you feel about something you buy is the intersection of the thing itself and what you pay for. Consumers need to feel like the thing itself is amazing and the price they were charged was fair for what they got.
“What we think about is making the most spectacular piece of entertainment on Earth, in history — and it’s a pretty daunting challenge. If we do that, and if we’re of service to our customers, then the upside will take care of itself.”
GTA 6 is widely speculated to be the most expensive game ever made, with Take-Two estimated to have spent between $1 billion to $2 billion developing and marketing the title. Yesterday, we wrote a story about a marketing stunt in Miami for GTA 6 that reportedly cost $1 million in itself.
The game is expected to be the most popular entertainment launch of all time, breaking records when it launches to the public this November. Analysts predict GTA 6 will generate $5.2 billion in sales by the end of launch week. GTA 6 releases for PS5 and Xbox Series consoles on November 19.
We’ve got extensive coverage of GTA 6 across IGN. Check out IGN’s interview with Rockstar Games, our GTA 6 preview, and word of the first confirmed GTA 6 voice actor.