GTA 6 is shaping up to be the most expensive video game ever made, with parent company Take-Two estimated to have already spent between $1 billion and $1.5 billion on its development. Business Insider arrived at this staggering figure based on industry analyst estimates as part of an interview with Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick. While Zelnick declined to confirm the exact amount spent on GTA 6 so far, he did acknowledge that "it was expensive"—a massive understatement if we're talking billions of dollars.
To put this in perspective, most triple-A games that make headlines for their budgets do so in the hundreds of millions. For example, Bungie's recently released extraction shooter reportedly cost over $250 million, and Concord's initial development deal was around $200 million, according to Kotaku. In 2023, court documents from the Xbox Federal Trade Commission case accidentally revealed that The Last of Us: Part II and Horizon Forbidden West each cost over $200 million to develop. Last year, the Call of Duty series' astronomical budgets were exposed when a court document confirmed Activision spent $700 million on Black Ops Cold War alone over its lifecycle. Clearly, GTA 6 surpasses them all.
Given expectations that GTA 6 will be the biggest entertainment launch in history, such high development costs are no surprise. The game has been in the works for a long time; according to Business Insider, some Rockstar employees have been working on it for over a decade. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Zelnick said development costs have risen over the years, but Take-Two aims to give its teams "unlimited financial, creative human resources and then they aim to deliver perfection."
Naturally, discussions about GTA 6's development costs lead to speculation about its price. Bank of America recently recommended selling GTA 6 for $80, $10 more than the standard $70. Analyst opinions vary widely, with some suggesting Rockstar stick with $70, while others argue it could easily justify a $100 price tag. While GTA 6 will undoubtedly break sales records, questions remain about its performance amid a tough economy. As Business Insider notes, console gaming is more expensive than ever, with Sony raising the PS5's price in March. GTA 6 will launch exclusively on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, a decision Zelnick recently explained.
As reported by IGN, Zelnick told an audience at iicon that "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."
Zelnick also noted that game pricing has effectively gotten cheaper over the years, pointing out that major releases have remained at $60 or $70 for over a decade despite inflation. "If you look at it through that lens, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But that isn’t the lens through which we look. Instead, we look at… how do we deliver something amazing, and how do we make sure that what people pay for it feels very reasonable."
We'll have to wait until Rockstar kicks off GTA 6 marketing (hopefully with Trailer 3) this summer to find out the actual price. After a series of delays, GTA 6 is set to launch on November 19, 2026.
