While some analysts recently spoke about how not every publisher has the cultural cachet of Grand Theft Auto 6 to be able to charge $80 for their games, others believe that we might start seeing more price increases across the hobby regardless. Speaking to GamesRadar, DFC Intelligence’s David Cole mentioned that the industry had already started moving in this direction thanks to Nintendo’s decision to charge $80 for Mario Kart World. However, he reiterated that “there are only a handful of premium games” that can do so.
Professor at NYU Stern School of Business and industry researcher Joost van Dreunen reiterated his previous thoughts on the matter, saying that the new price tag is “reserved for only a select few titles and franchises”.
“Gaming is increasingly becoming a luxury category,” van Dreunen explained. “Its economics have historically centered around a winner-takes-most model, and GTA 6 raises the bar again. Publishers who can clear it will pull further ahead, and those who cannot will have to compete on distribution instead, finding new channels, bundles, and pricing models to reach players the blockbusters don’t.”
Analysts had spoken about this shortly after pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto 6 went live earlier this month. Among them was Kantan Games CEO Dr. Serkan Toto, who mentioned the fact that Take-Two Interactive had gone with higher price tags before.
“Why should it not become the trailblazer for the industry again? Jumping from $70 to $80 is a 14.3% price increase, which is quite a lot. It will very much depend on the game, but I can easily see some marquee titles going for this price, perhaps even this year, too.”
Alinea Analytics’ Rhys Elliot mentioned that publishers who aim for the $80 price tag without a game that is comparable in terms of cultural and commercial significance to Grand Theft Auto 6 or Mario Kart World are in for a rude awakening. He also noted that even Grand Theft Auto 6 doesn’t quite have the pricing power to go beyond the $80 ceiling.
“I think a lot of publishers are about to learn that the hard way,” said Elliot. “GTA 6 has more pricing power than any game on earth, and it still didn’t go above $80. If the biggest release in the industry’s history looked at the ceiling and chose not to break it, that should tell everyone else the ceiling is real, and they’ll smack their head on it. The danger is that publishers read ‘GTA is $80′ as a green light and push their own run-of-the-mill or new-IP games to $80, when the lesson is the opposite: even GTA didn’t think it could go higher.”
In the meantime, rumors have indicated that pre-orders for the PS5 version of Grand Theft Auto 6 have been far outperforming the Xbox Series X/S version. The former is said to be beating the latter by a ratio of six to one. Despite this lead that the PS5 might have, Microsoft has clarified that Xbox has been seeing “record orders”.
Grand Theft Auto 6 is slated for release on November 19th. For more, check out our thoughts on why a new trailer is likely dropping soon.
