GTA 6

Rockstar

Grand Theft Auto 6 preorders are live if you care to secure a digital copy five months ahead of release for whatever reason. It was big news yesterday that GTA 6 would cost $80, which is $10 over the $70 price of 99% of AAA games in the present market. The idea is that if any game could try this, it’s GTA 6, and at least it wasn’t going to cost $100, as some had feared.

Well, about that.

There is a $100 edition of GTA 6, the Ultimate Edition. It is certainly not unusual for almost any game to have a pricier option like that, and $100 isn’t as controversial a price for that, especially given the long list of extra content you’ll get in the game. But what may end up happening here is that the majority of players, even the vast majority, may pay $100 for the Ultimate Edition over the Standard Edition.

There’s already early data coming in about this. I’m running my own poll right now on Twitter where 25% of my readers say they’ll get the Standard Edition, with 75% saying the Ultimate Edition. Insider Gaming has a poll with over 10,000 votes, and the split there is 20% to 80% in favor of the Ultimate Edition. IGN has a poll as well that is 30-70% Ultimate. You can see the trend here. For most players, it’s potentially a 2:1 to 4:1 ratio of those getting the $100 Ultimate edition. The caveat here is that these gaming sites may skew heavily toward harder-core gamers, but it’s still eyebrow-raising data.

Why? Why would so many people pay $100 for GTA 6 after so much handwringing that it could cost $100, and that’s $30 over the standard price of games? A few reasons.

• Players have been waiting 13 years for GTA 6 since GTA 5 came out in 2013. Depending on their level of anticipation, sure, it’s worth paying an extra $30, a Door Dash delivery, for the “complete” version, even if it may seem like a bit of a gouge.
• Players may end up playing GTA 6 for…another 13 years. Given how long it took GTA 6 to get here, we can’t even think about when GTA 7 might arrive. So sure, playing a game that may last you until 2040 may be worth a bit of extra cash.
• There is a lot locked behind the Ultimate Edition, loads of clothes, tattoos, cars and much more. Players are complaining about the delivery mechanism for some of this, stores that are “closed” on the map unless you own the Ultimate Edition. But when you’re not complaining on Twitter and instead voting in anonymous polls, many will admit to themselves they’re paying that $100.

We don’t have data across dozens of other AAA games with Ultimate Editions on the ratios of Ultimate sales to base-game sales. I would be amazed, however, if it were anywhere close to these figures, as almost no games could seduce the vast majority of their players into paying $100 up front. But this is GTA, it does the impossible.

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