Featured Image Credit: Rockstar Games
Topics: GTA, GTA 6, Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar Games
Gamers are rightfully torn over the speculated price of GTA VI, with publishers being labelled as “delusional”.
There’s nothing quite like our favourite hobby of playing video games, whether that's kicking back and relaxing for a few hours after work or school, or perhaps even blitzing through a campaign from our pile of shame over the weekend.
However, as we all know, keeping up with the latest video game releases can get very expensive.
Check out the GTA VI trailer below!
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It’s why subscription services such as Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus can offer such great value for money. A subscription can end up being much cheaper than a full-priced AAA game, yet we get access to hundreds of video games to play instead of just one.
What’s more, to ease any financial burden, it’s also a good idea to pick up titles in sales at a discount. Of course, that’s not even taking into account reasonably priced indie games.
I’m an 80s/90s child so I remember how expensive games used to be, especially when it came to NES, SNES and N64 games.
Physical production costs were much more expensive back then due to the use of video game cartridges and additional packaging. Today, in comparison, the production cost of a Blu-Ray disc is much less.
Furthermore, video game companies are reaping the benefits of the digital age, bringing down their manufacturing costs.
On the flip side of that though, production costs elsewhere have drastically risen with games taking much longer to develop now than they once did, often requiring much larger teams.
With that in mind, in the last couple of years, we’ve seen the cost of AAA video games rise to as much as £70 - and that’s just for a standard edition, not taking into account special editions with extra DLC and whatnot.
And now there's talk of video games jumping to £100 for a standard edition with the highly anticipated GTA VI being the first high-profile game to possibly make the jump.
To be fair, out of all the games that could charge that much, Rockstar Games' GTA VI is perhaps most likely to get away with it.
However, if GTA VI were to sell for £100 for a standard edition, that could be seen as a perfect excuse by video game publishers to follow suit, and that would be very anti-consumer.
“I don’t understand how all these other game companies are so delusional,” said Redditor Abject-Salamander614. “You see all these articles about other companies wanting GTA VI to be $100. Like it’s going to benefit them?"
“Games such as Madden, NBA 2K, MLB the Show, Assassins Creed, CoD, etc don’t deserve to be $100,” they continued. “If you put a new title out every year, they don’t deserve that price tag. I'll, without a doubt, pay $100 for GTA VI, but I won’t pay more than $70 for any other game.”
“That's what happens when you open the floodgates,” replied Legolas5000. “This is why nobody should be like ‘I'm fine with GTA VI costing $100.’”
Let's not forget that most major sports games push microtransactions which result in incredible revenue for publishers with players wanting to unpack the latest and most prestigious sports stars for their digital dream team. Then, the next game arrives the following year and that process begins again.
Sure, publishers might make silly money around launch, but not every game is GTA VI and before long, gamers will be priced out and surely that would negatively impact sales in the long run. At that point, shareholders will act in the way they usually do to reduce costs, and nobody wants that.
I guess we’ll find out what happens when GTA VI releases on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S late this year, assuming it doesn't get delayed.