The jump to the current generation of gaming prompted publishers across the industry to increase their price points in order to reflect the budgets, time, and talent that goes into a game.

One industry analyst claims that increasing this further, for premium games such as GTA VI, could “save” gaming as we know it.

Veteran investment analyst Matthew Ball recently published a 219-page report titled ‘State of Video Gaming in 2025’, looking at how the industry could grow this year.

In this report, he notes that “there is hope” that Take-Two, the parent company of Rockstar Games, will price GTA VI at “$80, or even $100”.

Ball considers that breaking this “key price barrier” would urge other publishers to also raise their prices to increase overall revenue.

This idea echoes past comments from one Baldur’s Gate 3 developer who also noted that GTA VI could push a change in video game pricing.

Pricing is down to the publishers and can be chosen at will, and given the production costs of a game of this magnitude, it’s not out of the realm of possibility to see a jump for consumers.

The danger here, if I may, is pricing people out of their hobby.

Of course, developers and publishers should earn what they’re worth and those years of development should yield a profit.

However, there are some who simply cannot afford to pay more for their games and while Ball also notes that GTA VI could monopolise players’ time, giving them a lot of hours for the cost, it could still see low income players struggling to cover the cost.

Publishers have found many ways of monetising their games beyond the sticker price, such as battle and season passes, DLC, and cosmetics.

Rockstar Games will, at some point, give the public an updated version of GTA Online which will continue to earn them money for the next decade or more.

For now, we’ll have to wait and see what price is announced, hopefully, with the next trailer.a