USA Bank Wants You to Pay $80 for GTA 6 So Other Devs Can Charge More Too

1 nessisonett Guillotine please. 2 paulo1manso GTA is THE ONLY GAME that can manage to sell at $80 lol 3 PsBoxSwitchOwner It’s a fine line to tread. £70 feels a tipping point for many. So sure you may get some that pay £80 but how many will wait for a sale? Especially when it’s £70 day 1 and often it isn’t feature complete and quite often buggy. You no longer get the best experience. You can wait 6month get some updates and a cheaper product. 4 Oram77 A tone deft take is a tone deft take... 5 Ralizah I think it's cute these soulless corpos are convinced people who are willing to pay $80 for GTA VI would be willing to pay that price for almost anything else. 6 BusyOlf I think it was Michael Jackson who sang “ All I wanna say is that they don't really care about us “ 7 Dalamar Sorry, bank of America, I'll pay no more than 0 dollars for GTA6. 8 For-Kier I don't understand how GTA6 would set the new price at $80? If companies don't give you a game on the level of GTA6, then no one is going to pay $80 for your game. So I hope your game is a 10 year, billion dollar game if you think that just because GTA6 can command $80 or more, that yours could too... 9 Balaam_ I never knew I needed a ski mask and a bag with a dollar sign on it until I read this Bank of America quote. 10 Deadlyblack Man, shut up rich bank higher ups lmao. Leave it to a bank to have the worst take of the year in the gaming sphere. 11 INeedGoodGraphics New big budget games usually go for about 125 AUD here on the psn store. Last gen I could walk into a game store and get it on disc for 90 AUD on release day. I miss those days. 12 dasd2 There is no possibility of exceeding $70 because make money through in-app purchase. 13 Fizza 14 Rich33 Devs/publishers can charge £80, but it will be up to the game itself to justify it's worth. Personally, I would be happy to pay £80 for a fantastic game that looks amazing, and has flawless performance. My real issue comes from poorly made / optimised games releasing under the 'release broken, and maybe fix later' banner, we see so often. In the same way I would not pay literally anything for GTA6 if its not 60fps. 15 Member_the_game £70 is probably my limit That said I don't think I've ever actually paid that for a game. I can't speak for the entire world but in the UK the likes of Smyth's and Currys very often give a slight discount when you pre order the game. The RRP maybe £70 but £62 - £64.99 is probably more realistic Unless of course you buy it digitally in which case there will be no discounts (certainly not day 1 anyway) 16 Nexozi What's this got to do with a bank? 17 somnambulance Because they aren’t squeezing our grapes enough already, huh? I hope I see the day where we one day value people over profits. 18 Splash_Woman Considering a Bank of America acquisition from many years ago led to someone in my family getting laid off and heading down a bad road because of it, I'd just have to say "Why are you even weighing in on the price of GTA 6, you ravenous subhuman ghouls?" 19 EYEBALL Well it's that or a Nintendo mobile looking game for the same price. The industry needs a revamp or a crash. 20 MidnightDragonDX Bet he’s never played a game in his life. So tired of this screw everyone but the rich attitude corporations have. 21 Bot_Bot_69 It's pretty cowardly to hide behind GTA. Personally I'm not even sure I'll be getting GTAVI, I've started GTAV many times and never finished it and I have no interest in the multiplayer component. If the game runs at 60fps 4k in some performance mode on a base PS5 I may pick it, but knowing that this type of game doesn't hold my attention the whole way any more it'd be difficult to even pry £70 from my wallet. 22 themightyant I don't want it to be $80... but if it is GTA6 will still sell like hot cakes. The same is NOT true for many other games. 23 themightyant That said I do feel a little for devs / publishers, games have effectively trended cheaper over the years, while the price has gone up occasionally it is well behind inflation (below) and purchasing power. I can't really think of many successful industries that are the same. E.g. 1985 - A $40 NES game would be around $122 today 1990 - A $55 SNES game would be around $138 today 1996 - A $60 N64 game would be around $126 today 2000 - A $50 PS2 game would be around $96 today 2005 - A $60 X360 game would be around $101 today 2013 - A $60 PS4 game would be around $85 today 2020 - A $70 PS5 game would be around $89 today 24 gamer153 I hope GTA is not sold at more than $70 US. If it is, I will move it from my “Must Buy” to “Wait for a Sale” category. And that would be sad for me. BoA has not place commenting on video games. Seriously, these Mammon worshippers are out of control. 25 Bot_Bot_69 @themightyant You're correct that it's true that they've gotten cheaper, but they have far less overheads given that it's a mainly digitial market and the number of gamers has increased many fold. 26 MickOnYourFace Is every higher-up in America just a greedy c***? 27 themightyant @Bot_Bot_69 This is true, but game development costs have also gone up 10x - 100x in that time. To be clear I don't WANT games to get more expensive, but I understand why studios might want prices to increase. Feels like there needs to be a balance somewhere. Personally I would like to see more of a range of prices in games. I wouldn't mind if the occasional AAAA (yes I used it. lol) game like GTA6 was $80 as long as other games were $50 or $60 not $70, we do see a little of it, yet not enough imo. But value is subjective. 28 Starkei The article has numbers in US dollars. A £69.99 game in the UK is already way over that $80 when you convert it. 29 gamer153 @MickOnYourFace “Is every higher-up in America just a greedy c***?” In my best Kliff impersonation: Yes 30 RockyOfficial @MickOnYourFace Yes because late-stage capitalism is unfeasible and America is in freefall and has entered a new age of serfdom. 31 Bot_Bot_69 @themightyant I don't disagree with any of that. I'd personally like them to bring their development costs down, make smaller games and spread the risk out a bit. It's insane how long the credits are on major releases. I'm not someone who's particularly convinced of the value of marketing, it often appears to me a bit of a black hole, certainly for established brands/series, I imagine the amount they'll spend on GTA marketing will be immense, when really everyone and their gran will know when it's out. 32 BIG3 Take Two have no interest in selling gta vi at a high price because they need a high installbase for online (where they make their real money). Instead other gaming companies need to chill out on development time and money spent making a game. 33 IntrepidWombat @Starkei UK prices are VAT inclusive. US prices do not include sales tax since it varies by municipality (city, county, and state set sales tax). The $69.99 game is actually $76.81 in my town. Still, £70 is like $95. You guys are getting screwed. 34 Artois2 That’s one way to rescue the American economy 😂 35 Starkei @IntrepidWombat oh yes we get taxed out the arse until dead then taxed again for good measure. Nice weather though. 36 Americansamurai1 Used to work for bank of America extreme crappy company. 37 Krlozgod They are out of their minds, $70 is already a lot for a single game. With many good games releasing per month they want to make us bankrupt. 38 Max_the_German No stress, it will be $89 (or $119 for the Digital Deluxe Edition, with 14 days of „early access“). 39 Veritas7Ax Don't quite get how a bank, a completely separate business entity, has such a strong stake in what Rockstar does. 40 themightyant @Bot_Bot_69 Totally agree about bringing costs down, and the length of credits can be insane (40 mins+). But as someone who loves graphical fidelity, and I know there's many of us, I don't see how they can do both without AI (which gamers also seem against). It feels like something has to give. That said I do think many more games could/should be smaller affairs, smaller scope, smaller budget etc. BUT will they sell? AA is probably the worst affected of all the 3 tiers, far too many failures, AAA and indie seem safer bets, though not safe. Not an easy problem to solve. Meanwhile games fail and studios with it. I don't pretend to have the answers, but I know it's rough. I do think too many games release, more than ever, that is one problem, the money is spread too thin - especially that so much of it goes towards so few games at the top - but what are we going to do about it... Stop people making games who want to? That specifically feels impossible to solve. Personally I do think marketing can MASSIVELY increase a games sales, but much like pricing GTA6 is an outlier and other studios shouldn't follow whatever they do. 41 IamJT @themightyant yea gaming is arguably cheaper than ever. Launch price is cheaper and you can do physical and digital sales or subscriptions. We are at a point where there is way more content for less price, but that is not good enough. Cost of living is higher which I guess is the counter argument. Not devs fault though, there expenses are also much higher. 42 YeoSprings Personally, they could charge £100 if they wanted. It wouldn't make no difference to me as I always wait til games are heavily reduced from their initial price with all the bugs fixes included. 43 Mythologue That sounds like a great deal. Spend more money so that we can continue to spend more money? Revolutionary. Let's get right on that. 44 Boxmonkey Paying £80 for gta 6 would be acceptable but that doesn’t mean I’d pay it for any other game! 45 Chosen-Libra Yeah, the guaranteed 97 Metacritic game that took 8-13 years of development with thousands of developers and billions of dollars might get away with $80. Your average slop will not. But they know that. They know what they're doing. 46 PerpetualBoredom All I gotta say is: Free Luigi ❤️ 47 Slippship I think 50 quid'll be about right and I can wait for that price point. I've given up on day one releasing. Most of my PS5 gaming has come from either PS4 or psplus. I know the kids will buy it at whatever. But I'm not one anymore. 48 DogPark Take-Two is a publicly traded company so aren't they obligated to maximize potential profits with every business decision they make (Or they can be sued by shareholders for not maximizing profits)? Of course it could be argued that a cheaper price point will bring in more money down the road with in-game transactions... 49 Frmknst I'll get Gta 6 luke any other AAA title for 55-60 bucks at launch 50 mikeawmids Bankers gonna' bank. 51 LifeGirl Where is Johnny Silverhand when you need him? 52 WhatTheFrog Payment processors should never dictate the price of the world. Keep monopolies out of gaming 53 rjejr Besides $80 MKW there are at least 4 other Switch 2 games that cost $80. Super Mario Wonder Mario Party Jamboree Kirby Forgotten Lands Zelda TotK https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/games/nintendo-switch-2-games/#corePlatforms=Nintendo+Switch+2&f=corePlatforms&sort=pd&p=0 Sure, they include some stuff not found in the Switch versions of the games, but if the game is $80 and you can't buy it any cheaper than $80 then it's still $80. And Donkey Kong Bananza was a $70 game a/ a $20 dlc about a month later. All of the seasonal activities in the game since then have been dlc dependent . I still haven't played GTAV so I don't care how they price it but the $80 cat is out of the bag. 🤑 54 tgt @DogPark No, they're not. It’s Reddit, but: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15iy8ra/eli5_what_people_mean_by_saying_a_company_is/ 55 RobN Inflation is real. I hate BoA for other reasons (they briefly held my mortgage, and had no way to pay online without incurring a fee, garbage bank I will never voluntarily do business with), but...I think they have a point here. $60 in 2020 is the same as $74.64 in 2025 (source: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator) - so charging $70 in 2026 is charging less in real money than charging $60 in 2020. $80 in 2025 dollars (not even 2026) is more like $64.32 in 2020 dollars - that's not much of an increase at all, honestly. $60 in 2014, when GTAV originally released, is the same as $81.60 in 2025 - so by that measurement, $80 isn't even an increase. 56 Quasicat GTA VI could probably get away with the higher price, but just because Rockstar charges it doesn’t mean I will buy other games at that price. 57 crimsontadpoles There are very few games where I'd be willing paying that much. GTA VI might be one of them, but even then I'd consider waiting for a sale. 58 IMustardMitt It's ridiculous to even consider paying this much for a standard edition of a game. Unfortunately, hardcore GTA fans (of which I am not one) will pay it, to avoid FOMO. 59 RockyOfficial @Veritas7Ax Equity stake as shareholder would be the likely guess. 60 Elock Only $80? They could get away with even more for the kind of people who play it