GTA 6 parent company Take-Two is estimated to have spent between $1bn and $1.5bn on Rockstar’s upcoming game.
That’s according to Business Insider (via IGN), which based these staggering figures on estimations made by industry analysts, as part of an interview with Take-Two’s head honcho, Strauss Zelnick.
To compare other big ‘triple-A’ video game releases from recent years, in 2023 it was revealed that Horizon Forbidden West cost $212m (£168m) to develop over five years between 2017 and 2022, with 300 employees attached to the project. At this same time, fellow PlayStation exclusive The Last Of Us Part 2 was revealed to have cost $220m (£174m) to make, with an employee count of roughly 200. More recently, Bungie’s Marathon reboot reportedly had a budget of $200m.
So, yes, big games have been costly to develop for quite some time, but it seems that GTA 6 is costly with extra emphasis on each and every letter in the word.
Zelnick himself has stated GTA 6 has been an “expensive” endeavour, though he refrained from putting an actual figure on how much GTA 6 is costing its parent company. Given analysts are talking about a figure over one billion dollars, though, this feels like quite an understatement from the Take-Two head.
But, it is not just GTA 6’s development cost that has caused discussion in the industry. Just how much Rockstar and Take-Two will charge for its series’ next car boosting romp has also stirred up some discourse, and early last year, a report suggested that GTA 6 could retail for $100.
In April, Zelnick discussed GTA 6’s price, and while he didn’t give us that all important figure, the Take-Two CEO stressed that the company’s “job is to charge way, way, way less of the value delivery”. At this time, Zelnick called “making the most spectacular piece of entertainment on Earth, in history” a “pretty daunting challenge”.
GTA 6 is currently scheduled to release on 19th November, across PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more, here is everything we know about Grand Theft Auto 6 so far.
