• GTA6: it's not cheap

    From Spalls Hurgenson@spallshurgenson@gmail.com to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action on Sun May 10 12:40:44 2026
    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 Rin Stowleigh@nospam@nothanks.com to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action on Sun May 10 16:26:37 2026
    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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