GTA 6 will cost $80

I think it's just that some people really like having a physical object to put in their bookshelf or whatever. I don't personally see the point, but I also don't need any more clutter in my house.

quentindanjou2• 28 days ago

So it has a presence in stores.

varispeed• 28 days ago

Sounds shit. Taking space for products that actually need space.

dguest• 28 days ago

Also so that it can make the retailer money. The studio might not want to piss off the retailer, which they would do by pulling the physical copy (or selling it at the OEM price directly). There are cases where retailers will de-list some products in retaliation.

What's interesting to me is that game studios have less to loose here than other OEMs. With equipment like shoes, outdoor gear, or cars, having the physical product out in stores does a lot to sell it: you have to try on shoes, driving a car builds attachment, it's also nice to check the build quality of your tent or whatever.

With games, you generally just have to play it / read the reviews, and you can trial it directly at home in a lot of cases.

FinnKuhn• 28 days ago

You can't wrap an email as a Christmas present.

Topfi2• 28 days ago

Physical store space, promotional contracts with vendors, special editions, bundles, etc.

I find it very silly, utterly unnecessary, but it is far from unprecedented [0] for this industry. I think it's very problematic for preservation and will only lead to more interest from groups trying to bypass their DRM because of this.

[0] https://www.shacknews.com/article/108552/cardboard-disc-incl...

Traster• 28 days ago

It's being released on November 19th, you need a box so it can go on a shelf in walmart so your relative can buy it, wrap it up and put it under the christmas tree.

scotty79• 28 days ago

Selling empty useless packaging should be illegal. If they want to use physical chain they should come up with a physical product that has some utility.

Stitch4223• 28 days ago

No disks large enough probably (100 gig for PS5). And still if they manage to squeeze some form of the game on it, a large day one patch would render it obsolete.

A nice box with artwork like a map and other goodies is still great. I always found those maps useful and aesthetically pleasing.

Having a playable version of a game physically is great and I’d buy a version with some physical storage medium if it ever hits the shelves. Maybe the game needs more time for that. Or a different data carrier.

Edit: added PS5 disk size and preference of a physical game

gonzalohm• 28 days ago

World of Warcraft shipped with 6 DVDs or something like that. Installing it was a pain in the ass but there is something nice about that whole ritual

MYEUHD• 28 days ago

A PS5 disk can hold as much as 100GB, and they could use multiple disks if necessary.

gdulli• 28 days ago

Maybe the point is to trick people into thinking they're buying a version that they have the right to resell. The online version is a lesser product.

v5v3• 28 days ago

Awareness and for those who don't yet have a console?

Every shop selling it will be advertising it in their shop windows and on the shop floor. That's free marketing!

Also I imagine there will be bundle deals with consoles and other accessories.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 28 days ago

GTA III was $50 in 2001.

nharada• 28 days ago

Yeah if it has the amount of content people are expecting I'd say it'll be well worth 80 bucks

Topfi2• 28 days ago

Especially considering the price of e.g. Mario Kart World.

LearnYouALisp3• 27 days ago

No Man's Auto

crims0n6• 28 days ago

Which would be $94.29 in today's dollars.

justinsaccount• 28 days ago

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 launch price was $69.99. in 1994.

That's $159.89 in today's dollars.

baby_souffle• 28 days ago

About 90$ adjusted for inflation, using this tool:

https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=50&year1=20010...

reaperducer• 28 days ago

I paid $50 for launch-day Atari 2600 Pac-Man at a department store in 1982.

That's $177 today.

But at least I still have a plastic rectangle 44 years later. I'd lose a download code in a matter of months.

akimbostrawman6• 28 days ago

That does not take into account how much cheaper it is now with hand holding engines and assets shops. Not to mention games have more than 10 times the customer base now so the price should still go down.

add-sub-mul-div• 28 days ago

I'll respond next week when I'm finished laughing.

crims0n6• 28 days ago

Over a decade of development and an estimated budget between $1-2 Billion, I am okay with paying ten bucks more. There are significantly lesser games selling for full retail.

serf• 28 days ago

Over a decade of development and an estimated budget between $1-2 Billion, I am okay with paying ten bucks more.

I don't balance my checkbook based on what other people spend, and presuming that those things have anything to do with perceived quality is a fools' errand with the multitude of counter examples one can bring up of AAA flops.

lesser games

this thing isn't even out yet.

how many examples of over-produced and under-delivered expensive garbage in film, media, video games & art do we need to produce until people disconnect the two concepts of quality and cost ?

edit : I used cadre the wrong way

10729287• 28 days ago

Is it easier for you if we talk about lifetime of the game, especially online ?

crims0n6• 28 days ago

It is Rockstar, they haven't missed in a couple of decades and this is their flagship product.

toyetic• 28 days ago

I'm only 25 but I remember when games were $40 - $60 lol. GTA 6 is certainly worth the extra price but man I didn't realize how good we had it.

k12sosse• 25 days ago

In 1992 street fighter II for SNES was $90 canadian

dessimus2• 28 days ago

Another way to consider it is to think of it in terms of entertainment value. The average movie runtime in the US is 114 minutes or 1.9 hours, and the average movie ticket is $11.50. This means I'm paying on average ~$6.05/hr to see a movie. Taking the cost of GTA at $80, then you would only need to play for ~13.2 hours to break even compared to watching movies in the theater. But if I played 100 hours, then I paid $0.80/hr to play the game.

Fluorescence• 28 days ago

It's very weird to consider "time consumed" as a positive not negative metric.

A good piece of art changes your consciousness and makes you a different person. The best part of a book for me is not in the reading but how it becomes a part of my own imaginative engine and a new lens with which I can view the world.

I play games too... but I'm aware they are cynical time-vampires that pad out their content with repetitive grinding to jump virtual hurdles hijacking my reward centre with one-arm-bandit psychosis to make draining my life away by a rng feel "entertaining".

HWR_142• 28 days ago

If they sold 100 million copies at $60, that still be would be an excellent ROI on $1-2 billion.

thefz• 28 days ago

I don't know, I bought RDR2 and wasted hours of progress for a launcher bug that is corrupting savegames that Rockstar very well knows about and decided to never fix. Because once you already spent for the game, who cares about the user experience after sale, right?

For me, f- them and their shitty products.

akimbostrawman6• 28 days ago

for a launcher bug that is corrupting savegames

Paying customers getting the worse experience is par for the course now.

akimbostrawman6• 28 days ago

Its 20 bucks more not 10.

maxwellito2• 28 days ago

Excuse my silly question, but what's the point of pre-buying a game, if it will only exists as a downloadable copy. I get you want to gift it for xmas, but for the rest of players? The point of pre-sale is to make sure you will get one when it comes out?

bigmattystyles• 28 days ago

Usually, they throw in some free content or dlc for pre-purchasing, entice people before potentially negative reviews.

ranger207• 28 days ago

Generally it doesn't make sense, but in this particular case the servers are going ti be so overloaded with people trying to download it that it might be worth it to preloaded the game. Now of course they're probably going to have separate author servers that will probably also be overloaded with everyone trying to login at once (why does a single player game need you to log in first? good question!) so imo you're probably going to be screwed either way

crims0n6• 28 days ago

There is speculation that the size on disk will be over 200Gb, so one advantage is preloading that.

stuxnet792• 28 days ago

Is this after aggressive optimization? Size inflation for AAA games has truly reached new heights. If it had to be released via physical media that would require 3-4 BD discs at minimum.

I've been on a retro gaming binge lately because I strongly believe the constraints & limitations of older platforms yielded a better product imo.

VonGuard• 28 days ago

I personally agree that pre-buying is silly in today's world of digital distribution. But I will point out that most pre-sales now come with a digital item or two or five that's exclusive to pre-orders. Additionally, if you pre-order, you can sometimes download the game a day or so ahead of time, and then have it "unlock" when it's released, allowing you to play at minute 1. I'd wager GTA VI is well over 100 GBs, so this is actually a reasonable benefit, especially considering the potential for CDN crashes at launch time.

maxwellito2• 28 days ago

That's right. I forgot about the ability to pre-download the game before the official release, which might help the servers. That also remove the joke "Patch day 1 (of the size of the game)" which I always found ridiculous but became a standard practice.

Having the game of that size is the only excuse I accept for not releasing a physical version, but because no blu-ray will handle it, it starts darker days for game preservation. I love the fact that I will be able to undust my old PS4 in a couple of years and play GTA V without relying on the PlayStation Store. But we knew these days were counted.

xyzzy_plugh• 28 days ago

In addition to what the sibling comment wrote, many platforms will let you download the game in advance, and "unlock" immediately at launch. Some people want to be among the first to play, I guess.

teroshan• 28 days ago

The benefit for the player is they get a few additional in-game cosmetic unlocks, and the benefit for the publisher is they get a large wad of cash in advance and and an excuse to generate a new hype cycle surrounding the game.

maccard• 28 days ago

One reason for doing it is that download servers will be absolutely slammed on release. A pre-order will often times come with the bulk of the download happening a few days in advance, and then a very small download at release that contains a small amount of data that makes the game playable. This is an argument for buying a week out, not 5 months out though.

Another is that there are very often below-RRP deals for games in advance, but if you buy it on launch day you'll be paying RRP.

BadBadJellyBean• 28 days ago

It's for those people that can't wait a second after release. As if the game is any worse if you start playing it a few days later.

laughing_man3• 28 days ago

There was a time when pre-sales came with a special box that included a physical map or a mouse pad or some other bit of game merch. I don't think that's true anymore, though.

Though I think there have been some games that let you start playing two or three days earlier.

HWR_142• 28 days ago

Now they come with exclusive digital items

dango369• 27 days ago

no the point of presale is none with this specific release its in all cases just a digital copy and of those, they can generate infinite amount of codes...

so personally im just gonna wait a year for the PC release (a year max 2 is most likely)

ge96• 28 days ago

GTA 5 lasted so long, it's a good buy

satvikpendem• 28 days ago

They say it's $100 for the ultimate edition but really, due to how much stuff they're locking into only that edition (certain shops and stores in game), that's the base edition and the $80 one is the lite edition. It is simply a marketing trick to have a 100 dollar price tag without as much pushback.

mrmattyboy3• 28 days ago

Some backstory - I like gaming quite a bit - but more of a personal archivalist. I have basically all games I've ever played on physical media and try to keep someway to play them offline - just jailbroke my 360 to be able to play games from HDD incase the DVD drive broke. Anyway...

I saw the no DVD and was initially devastated. I'm in two minds - I saw one post that basically said "it won't contain a DVD at launch".. if I read between the lines, though I'm not sure I see the value incentive for Rockstar, but...

If they hypothetically launched with physical boxes with digital download codes, okay... This would definitely be in the name of re-sellers (as they've stated). But this is the same as piracy, which has always been, not that "we need to stop people from pirating our games for eternity" but "we need to stop people pirates our game for X months after launch", which makes sense (the piracy party).

So, I'm wondering, if they actually begin releasing physical disks (offline, re-sellable, usable in 20 years), say, 6-12 months after releasing the game.. would that work? I mean, for me, assuming it's the equal block-buster to the franchise I adore (in a varying sense), then I might not mind too much to pick up a copy after 6-12 months (I don't care about bleeding edge).. but... would this work? If we assume the first 12M of buyers can't resell, would the people who buy the game after 12M actually bring a great number to the second hand market.. perhaps not?

I really have the idea of having games that I love in physical form that I know it can't be taken away.. similar to reading a book that you end up reading and know you want to come back to anytime in the future.. and this would _suck_ if I couldn't get a copy (and I assume all PC versions would be full of online-only DRM stuff anyway).

Ergh, I dunno

Arainach2• 28 days ago

Physical media doesn't work when modern games are 100GB or more.

And to answer your question, most consumers don't care. The convenience of being able to buy with a few clicks and download immediately without going to a store or waiting for the mail is far more beneficial to most people than being able to locally archive or replay in 20 years.

mrmattyboy3• 28 days ago

Physical media doesn't work when modern games are 100GB or more.

This is a totally fair point and literally something I haven't even considered.

most consumers don't care

I know.. I know.. I mostly commented because the linked article _does_ speak about it and that it implied people weren't happy (mostly for re-sell not for archival purposes). But, yes, I get that

Maxatar3• 28 days ago

PS5 and XBox support Blu-ray discs with capacities up to 100 GB. Both GTA V and GTA IV used multiple discs (there was an installation disc and a play disc). Heck the PC version of GTA V required 7 DVDs:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/18hkrvj/you_c...

mrmattyboy3• 28 days ago

I guess my point is.. if they were really to wait for X months and then start to release physical media (again, I can't see the financial incentive for them to do it), but it would really put a big split between: 1) people that buy that the game and simply want to re-sell it and 2) people that want to buy the game to "last forever" (like myself). Because most of the people in 1) are _likely_ to be the people wanting to buy at launch, play it and move on, the second are _probably_ more willing to wait (or even (probably) wait and buy a second copy later).

dmos62• 28 days ago

Pirating should solve your problems pretty directly. That's basically what it is: restoring copyability of a piece of media.

Retr0id• 28 days ago

The highest capacity blurays available are 128GB and there's a good chance the game is larger than that, so it'd need to be a multi-disc installer.

I used to think physical media was great, but optical discs do have a finite shelf life. DRM-free is the important part, so you can make your own backups (like you're doing with your 360).

gbraad• 28 days ago

"physical copies will contain a code for a digital download for the game" ?!?

jjice• 28 days ago

This is unfortunately becoming the standard. I always buy physical when possible, but I think we're coming to the end of that...

3eb7988a16632• 28 days ago

Yup, the industry has been salivating at the thought of ending second hand sales and free game/disc borrowing. Yes, there can be some steel-man justifications for not providing discs, but it rings hollow.

LearnYouALisp3• 27 days ago

"Scan the following QR code..."

avdwrks• 28 days ago

I can't believe GTA 5 came out 13 years ago...

overgard• 28 days ago

I've been seeing a lot of drama around price increases in games, but I just don't find it to be that bad. I mean, 25 years ago a new game cost $50, and now that huge open worlds are common and the playtime can be in the hundreds of hours, and adjusting for inflation, I don't think $80 is a huge ask.

akimbostrawman6• 28 days ago

now that huge open worlds are common and the playtime can be in the hundreds of hours

You mean those huge worlds that are mostly empty and filled with copy paste content? I take a hand crafted linear experience over open world any day. Best example is Dark Souls 1 and Elden Ring.

AngryData2• 27 days ago

At the same time though they have a much larger customer base to sell to. Most things get cheaper with higher sales volume. If course that is probably part of the reason why the price of games stayed similiar for so long. But it is still a good thing to keep in mind, especially with such a well known studio.

quickthrowman• 27 days ago

Some games (lots of ROM chips) cost even more in the cart era. I paid $70 for NBA Jam on SNES in 1994, which is about $160 in inflation-adjusted 2026 dollars.

tao_oat• 28 days ago

The price seems sensible to me, these AAA titles are expensive to create.

Not that it'll affect me personally; I'm not buying this game after Rockstar's [union busting][1]!

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9v10rr1meeo

jaaasshh• 28 days ago

Time to start complaining to them about RDR3

NDizzle• 28 days ago

I think this is a reasonable compromise. Let's face it - they could have made this a $100 game (or even more) and many people would have bought it. I would have bought it. I'm not sure if it needs to go to Neo-Geo game costs ($200+?) but Rockstar has earned enough of my trust to buy in.

That said, I think I've bought GTA5 two or three times for various platforms over the years. I doubt we'll see GTA6 on sale for years.

As they say in the automotive industry, buy once, cry once. (Pay more for the known good thing, rather than buying the cheap third party things... I'm looking at you, $30 clockspringexperts.com that I have replaced 3 times in the past 4 years... instead of buying the $300 toyota part once)

jordemort• 28 days ago

It will be very interesting to see if this lives up to the hype and/or if it is able to recoup the enormous amount of money spent developing it. The expectations from everyone seem to be so high; it's a very long way to the bottom if it somehow flops.

Personally, things got a little too realistic for me around the time of GTA IV. The earlier games felt like cartoony fun but I started to feel bad about the stuff I was doing in IV. I tried V a year or two back (I think they've maybe remastered it since?) but it ran so terribly on the Steam Deck that I refunded it.

michaeljx• 28 days ago

If it lives up to the hype it will definitely recoup the expense.

zelias• 28 days ago

There's no way it lives up to the hype, right?

huey77• 27 days ago

Long time GTA fan and I have to agree. There’s an unbelievable amount riding on this one, and I feel like the GTA satirical magic is somewhat lost. From what I heard, a lot of the original team from R* have left - but let’s see! Real info is scarce.

tetris11• 27 days ago

It will flounder for years as a game rife with startup screens, unskippable content, microtransactions, an intermittently working forever online connection, and a toxic multiplayer.

Then it will hit PC. Mods will breathe new life into it. Cracks will dispense away with the invasive framerate-killing mechanisms. An underground P2P multiplayer client will be developed and it will get wildly successful. Rockstar will sue, then finally settle.

IAmGraydon• 28 days ago

I don't really care about the price. For me, the big disappointment is that it won't release on PC.

drw852• 28 days ago

It will, but with the usual delay of 1+ year.

spidercat• 28 days ago

This feels expensive, but I remember SNES games costing $60 in the 90s. If anything, the cost of videogames has been pretty resistant to inflation, I'd say?

ryanisnan• 28 days ago

This post title misses the big point here, which is that the physical copy will not include a physical disk, only a digital download code.

This effectively eliminates buying and re-selling of the game.

thegrim33• 28 days ago

It's so interesting to me that as a PC gamer, they chose to just .. not let me buy the game. It's not even an option, for any price. I'd have to wait multiple years for them to decide to go for another cash grab and do a PC release. No thanks, I just won't play.

laughing_man3• 28 days ago

I've never understood this. For most games by the time they release on PC the hype has died down and they get a tiny fraction of the sales they would have gotten with a simultaneous release.

galleywest200• 28 days ago

Rockstar was very open as to why: PC players are a fraction of a fraction of their income. Xbox One players (yes, the previous gen) give them more money than PC players for GTA Online.

linzhangrun2• 28 days ago

I don’t think Rockstar has ever launched on PC day one

wolvoleo4• 28 days ago

They did with GTA 1 and 2 :)

thewhitetulip• 28 days ago

Is it the same for PlayStation? I saw news that they are going to sell the CD jackets but not a CD, they ll just put a code in it.

Not sure why they're doing that farce even. Just let people buy the code online. Who wants a plastic packet for this much cost?

throw101010• 28 days ago

Game box collectors, people who want to offer a physical wrapped gift, kids who see it while shopping and nag their parents each time they pass near the boxes... on that last part it's pretty cheap advertising in every shopping center.

But mostly the goal is to remove the resale/rent/borrow ability of people who purchase this game unfortunately.

anshumankmr• 28 days ago

But this was the case since forever. Albeit I didn't play it on a PC till 2016 and kept playing GTA San Andreas till I knew Los Santos like the back of my hand.

tapoxi• 28 days ago

This has been the case with every Rockstar game since GTA 3, and it works for them. It sells a ton on consoles, piracy is severely limited, still sells wildly on PC, and lets them "double dip" on sales because some people will buy it twice.

gaiagraphia• 28 days ago

I'm so glad TTWO bust up the unions, otherwise it may have cost $81!

linzhangrun2• 28 days ago

For GTA 6, I think $80 is acceptable. I just spent almost $100 in DCS mainly for the F-14B(U)(though that comparison is not really fair, since DCS is much more niche and naturally needs a higher price to make up for lower sales)

I also don’t think the extra $20 will hurt GTA’s sales much. What I’m more worried about is whether other 3A games will use Rockstar’s price increase as an excuse to raise their own prices . And I’m even more worried that GTA may come out with a pile of DEI slop, which would really feel like another Atari crash.

drw852• 28 days ago

I personally don't really understand the uproar here. Console games have been $80 for a while now. Most of them don't even let you play on release if you dare to just buy the "pleb-Edition" and want you to pay $120 to be allowed to play on release.

Do i like the premium paywall stuff large publishers are doing? No. But this one is comparatively minor.

Sometimes a game comes out that i would really love to play and then i check the store page and feel like if i just buy the game for $80, i'm automatically being shafted by missing out on so many things. It's weird, but it makes me not want to buy these things sometimes. It does seem to work, since all my friends usually go for the $120+ variant.

pixel_popping• 27 days ago

For techy guys, we know it's all a KVM away to have it "PC native", that's what I will do personally, I'll buy the console likely just for this and just stream to have it as a regular Linux app.

bellowsgulch• 27 days ago

I'm surprised it won't be more.

You're telling me, you're building a product for adults who spend $1,500 or more on a PC, and you're selling your software that took a Burj Khalifa amount of effort to develop to these people for 5% of the cost of the machine they're going to run it off of?

It should probably cost closer to $180 bucks instead of $80.

GTA 6 will cost $80

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