After letting the speculation machine run wild for months, Take-Two announced in June that Grand Theft Auto 6 will launch with an $80 price tag for the basic, missing-some-stuff edition. That's a lot of money, especially when you consider that most people will feel compelled to lay out the extra $20 for the Ultimate Edition, which promises "an exclusive collection of premium vehicles, weapons, apparel, and action threaded across all aspects of Jason and Lucia’s story." But Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick reckons it's actually a heck of a deal for what you're getting.
Asked about the $80 price point for GTA 6—and the decision to leave NBA 2K27 at $70—during today's investors call, Zelnick repeated a point he's made previously: That Take-Two aims to "deliver way more value to consumers than what we charge them."
"The real cost of a triple-A videogame is a whole lot lower today than it was 20 years ago. Pricing has not kept pace with inflation," Zelnick said. "And our goal is to continue to overdeliver for our consumers because how you feel about any experience is the intersection of the experience itself and what you paid for it.
"To say that we expect that Grand Theft Auto 6 will be an incredible bargain as experiences go is a gross understatement, because Rockstar Games is known for overdelivering."
Not every game is Grand Theft Auto 6, a point made earlier this year by Bank of America securities analyst Omar Dessouky, who warned that if Take-Two didn't increase the GTA 6 price, the industry as a whole would probably be stuck at the $70 price point for years to come. So while GTA 6 will launch at the increased price point, Zelnick said not all Take Two's games will.
"Our goal is not to maximize price," Zelnick said. "So in this case, I think what we’ve decided to do makes a whole lot of sense in the context of what we’re delivering, and that’s the lens through which we’ll look going forward as well."
Grand Theft Auto 6 remains scheduled for release, on consoles, on November 19. We'll get our first look at gameplay on August 27, at 12 pm PT/3 pm ET on Netflix, and then six hours later on YouTube.
