With Grand Theft Auto 6‘s November 19th release date looming over the industry, the CEO of parent company Take-Two Interactive, Strauss Zelnick, has discussed how the title will be priced. Speaking at a conference for executives in the gaming industry (as caught by IGN), however, Zelnick hasn’t quite confirmed whether the open-world title will be priced in line with other games in the market, or if the company will opt for a higher price tag.
“Consumers pay for the value that you bring to them, and our job is to charge way way way less of the value delivery,” Zelnick said. “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 brought up the fact that, taking inflation into account, games have gotten cheaper when looked at from a wider lens, since just about everything else has gotten more expensive. Most major releases tend to be priced at $60 or $70 – a price point that has largely remained stable for quite some time.
“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,” he said.
Measuring the success of Grand Theft Auto 6, however, is a complicated subject for Zelnick. Calling it “the most spectacular piece of entertainment on Earth, in history,” he said that the current focus of the game’s development team is to make sure that the game is enjoyable.
“What we think about is making the most spectacular piece of entertainment on Earth, in history – and it’s a pretty daunting challenge. If we do that, and if we’re of service to our customers, then the upside will take care of itself.”
Speaking about the release date of Grand Theft Auto 6, Zelnick went on to joke that “a lot of people will be calling in sick on November 19.”
While Rockstar Games continues working on the title, a report from last month has indicated that the money needed to make it might exceed $2 billion. According to public records in the UK, Rockstar North has already spent £1.6 billion ($2.11 billion) on Grand Theft Auto 6 so far. These costs include employee salaries going all the way back to March 2019.
A former programmer who has worked on Grand Theft Auto 6 has also revealed through an update on their LinkedIn profile that the game will feature “next-generation procedural breakable glass.” They went on to describe their responsibilities, which included “designing tools for production to capture in-game footage with extra details from our rendering system,” during their tenure at the studio between February 2020 and April 2023.
Grand Theft Auto 6 is coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. There is currently no confirmation of a PC release.