From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


So, yeah, game development is expensive. And the recent GTA games have
always been some of the most expensive titles to create. But Take-Two
has estimated that they've spent between $1 and 1.5 billion dollars US
on GTA6's development so far. Which implies it's going to probably
cost more than that. And that doesn't take into account the marketing
and production costs (which will probably double that amount).

That's a lot of moolah for a single game.

[As a comparison, the most expensive Hollywood films
-"Avengers: End Game" and "Avengers: Infinity War" --
cost about $1 billion to produce together... but they
were filmed back-to-back.]

Some of it, I'm sure, is because the GTA games have routinely hired
known actors to do their voice-acting; Samuel L. Jackson was famously
in "San Andreas", Ray Liotta in "Vice City", Kyle MacLachlan in GTA3.
Heck, they even got Phil Collins to do a full concert in the PSP
version of the game. Hollywood rates are obscene, which is why the
game industry fostered its own pool of voice-actors (many of whom have
become stars in their own right now too). But that reliance on big
names has jacked up production rates for the Grand Theft Auto games
before, and I'm sure it's a big reason for the impressive price tag of
the next game too.

But it is also, of course, because the game-worlds of the GTA
franchise have always been so huge and amazingly detailed, and as
player's demands for visual fidelity and interactivity go up, this
only makes things more expensive. I'm not surprised that GTA6's budget
is incredibly high; I'm just surprised at how high it's become.

Because I can still remember when game development costs were counted
in the thousands of dollars. Heck, in the 8-bit days some developers
were lucky to see even a four-digit payday for their work. Wing
Commander III was famous for costing several million dollars in 1994;
it was lauded as the most expensive game of its time. Now we are
seeing games that are several orders of magnitude more expensive. And
while GTA6's numbers are exceptional... they aren't THAT unusual. AAA
game development costs have been pushing half-a-billion dollars for
years already. Rockstar is just a little ahead of the curve.

This cost also says a lot about how much money GTA5 raked in over the
years... and how much dosh Take-Two Games expects to pull in with the
sequel. These sort of costs also help explain why AAA studios are so
reluctant to risk their money on less predictable genres, and why they
are desperate for MTX and live-service plans to fill in the gaps when
retail sales aren't enough.

[Me, I just wonder how much of that added cost was due
to the skyrocketing costs of computer hardware needed by
all the thousands of developers. ;-)]

On the other hand, you have games like "The Callisto Protocol", which
IIRC was produced on a budget of 'merely' $30 million. No, it's
nowhere in the same class as the Grand Theft Auto games... but are
those games really the '50 times better' that their budgets would
suggest? Do we really need games this big and expensive? Wouldn't it
be better to have more but smaller and less expensive titles?

Still, I can't help but gawk with awe at the scale of this newest GTA
game. In my heart, I think I'd be happier with less grandiose
titles... but there is something disturbingly impressive about
spending that much money on a video game.


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sun, 10 May 2026 12:40:44 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Still, I can't help but gawk with awe at the scale of this newest GTA
game. In my heart, I think I'd be happier with less grandiose
titles... but there is something disturbingly impressive about
spending that much money on a video game.

Plus, Rockstar doesn't fuck around with their titles. In addition to
single player campaigns worth playing, the online modes of these games
provide years of replay value. Not saying the games are perfect, but
in a lot of ways they set a quality standard that other titles should
strive for if they want to charge AAA prices.
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