GTA 6

Rockstar

After years of debate and speculation, Rockstar Games has finally confirmed how much Grand Theft Auto 6 will cost. The biggest video game of all time will jump $10 over the standard price of AAA games and run for $80, rather than $70. An Ultimate Edition, which includes what are going to be some controversial bonuses, costs $100, a more standard price for those editions across other games.

The press release says that GTA 6 “features a single-player experience set in the biggest, most immersive evolution of the series yet,” all but confirming that it will launch without a new GTA Online mode, similar to what happened with GTA 5.

Rockstar confirms that the preorder time for GTA 6 is midnight local time on June 25, as in, tonight. If you preorder the game, you’ll be able to begin preloading the game a full week early on November 12, ahead of the November 19 release date. There will be no early access playtime, however, and you’ll have to play at launch like everyone else.

However, anyone who preorders and purchases before November 20 will get the Vintage Vice City Pack, which has a bunch of items from the ‘80s days of the franchise when Tommy Vercetti’s saga took place.

The Ultimate Edition is sure to create a few sideways glances, as in addition to a bunch of bonus items across all categories of gear, clothing, cars, etc, it also has access to exclusive vendors. Those are things like a car modification shop, a tattoo parlor, a clothing store and a salon. This isn’t to say you cannot get tattoos or customize your car or hair without them at other locations, but it’s likely they have a unique stock that will be locked to Ultimate. Details on this aren’t fully clear yet, however.

The $80 price for GTA 6 straddles the line between increasing just enough where Rockstar can say it’s “worth it” as likely the most expansive video game ever made, and earn tens if not hundreds of millions more from that increase alone, but also being low enough where this will likely change almost no one’s desire to buy the game. A $100 standard copy, and we’d be having an entirely different conversation.

The question, however, is what will happen in the rest of the industry from here. GTA 6 marks only the second time that a big game has priced its normal edition at $80, joining Nintendo’s Mario Kart World. Some studios like Xbox were starting to price games at $80, but quickly walked that back, and no one has done that since. GTA 6, however, may be a different story, and we will have to see if a dam will break. For now though, ready your wallets for tonight’s GTA 6 bonanza.

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