Rockstar should raise the price of Grand Theft Auto 6 to $80 for the benefit of the entire games industry, according to a Bank of America analyst.
As blockbuster video games continue to become more expensive to make, securities stock analyst Omar Dessouky argues that selling the much-anticipated GTA sequel for the now-standard $70 price point could negatively impact other games looking to raise their own prices to become more sustainable.
As pointed out in a note published by Bank of America around the recent Iicon event in Las Vegas, Take-Two executives did not endorse an $80 price tag, but noted that, considering inflation, the price of video games has fallen over time.
“We also heard from attendees that the industry, which is perceived as struggling, would have difficulty selling games for $80 if GTA 6 came out at $70,” Dessouky wrote. “We think it’s in Take-Two’s self-interest, as a publisher and partner to many developers, to raise the price point for the entire industry.”
It’s not the first time that a higher price point has been predicted for GTA 6. Last year, analyst Matthew Ball of Epyllion claimed that there was “hope” among figures in the games industry that GTA 6 could cost up to $100, so that other companies could raise their default prices as well, amid global inflation and swelling triple-A development costs.
Michael Pachter, the managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, later wrote: “We think the company has plans to sell the game at a previously unheard of price point, and suspect that management can offer consumers an incentive to pay $100 or more per unit by rewarding them with a large amount of in-game currency to be spent in GTA Online.”
Notably, Rockstar parent Take-Two was the first major publisher to raise game prices to $70 at the start of the current console generation – a stance that many other publishers soon followed on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Speaking at Iicon, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick addressed the issue of GTA 6’s price point, saying: “Consumers pay for the value that you bring to them, and our job is to charge way way way less of the value delivery.
“How you feel about something you buy is the intersection of the thing itself and what you pay for. Consumers need to feel like the thing itself is amazing and the price they were charged was fair for what they got.”
