GTA VI Might Inspire Other AAA Developers to Price Their Games at $100

As the AAA video game industry enters 2025, grappling with rising production costs, a previous year plagued by underperforming titles, and increasing inflation, it appears their last-ditch strategy – should they choose not to change their approach – might be to increase the price of their games, and not through artificial hikes such as pre-order bonuses or special editions, but directly, with standard copies costing players way more than the current $70 average.

However, making such a move out of the clear blue sky could easily backfire, alienating the remaining loyal players of AAA games, unless a precedent is set by one of the big-league studios – preferably one with a game guaranteed to sell millions of copies regardless of the price – and, according to a recent report, developers now pin their hopes on Rockstar and its upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI setting that precedent.

According to Matthew Ball's The State of Video Gaming in 2025 presentation, first spotted by VGC, some developers "hope" the next installment in the GTA franchise will be priced at $80–$100, fully capitalizing on its status as the most anticipated game on the market. This increase, the report suggests, would allow studios to raise the price of their own new games by at least $10 to offset declining player numbers and inflation while justifying the change by pointing to GTA VI's example.

Ball further highlighted that if priced at the industry-standard $70, GTA VI would be the cheapest Grand Theft Auto game in real terms, 30% less than the original 2D titles and 16-24% less than GTA IV and GTA V. "Recall that packaged game prices have never been lower in real terms than they are today – even though budgets are at all-time highs, and player growth is stalled," Ball wrote in his report.

Considering how underwhelming 2024 was for the AAA gaming industry, it might seem that raising prices is indeed the only way for some studios to stay afloat. However, even Ball's presentation, which appears to support the idea, admits that the reason they have to do this is the inflated budgets and stalled player growth – one of the causes and one of the effects of so many big-budget titles flopping last year.

With that in mind, adding an extra "0" to the price tags seems like putting a band-aid on a fractured hand and doesn't solve the core issues: overblown budgets that don't need to be that astronomically huge and AAA games simply being underwhelming in various ways, from poor optimization and repetitiveness to developers injecting unwelcome politics, which ultimately leads to fewer players. Hopefully, in 2025, studio CEOs will consider their options for addressing the real issues, rather than just hiking the prices to three digits and calling it a day.

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