On the prospect of an $80-$90 GTA 6, former PlayStation boss says ‘it’s an impossible equation’ for big-budget studios to keep their prices down

There’s every chance that GTA 6 will cost around $80—it’s not been confirmed, but the wind is certainly shifting that way. That’s as per the Xbox website, which told customers some bad news, writing “Some of our new, first-party games will launch at $79.99 beginning this holiday season.”

I should note that while Rockstar is owned by Take-Two Interactive, not Microsoft, this still marks a shift in the big-budget industry and, honestly, having seen the absurd graphical fidelity of GTA 6? If any game’s gonna cost $80, it’ll be that one.

Former PlayStation boss and Sony vet, Shuhei Yoshida, who left the company in 2024 after a whopping 38 years, thinks it was pretty much only a matter of time. “It was going to happen sooner or later,” he tells playstationinside. “Maybe not from Nintendo, but it was going to happen eventually.”

The problem, he puts it, is inflation. Which is an unerringly boring but also correct answer: “We live in contrasting times, where inflation is real and significant, but people expect games that are ever more ambitious and therefore expensive to develop to cost the same. It’s an impossible equation.”

In fact, companies are “keen to diversify their revenues” to fund the ever-bloated scale of these projects. That includes all these remakes and remasters: “Basically, the proliferation of remasters and remakes doesn’t really stem from any kind of nostalgia or a desire to bring games up to date, but is a kind of ‘easy’ solution to bring in profits that ultimately help finance new games.”

PC ports are part of that equation, but he says that’s not as much of an issue because they’re propped up by support studios—I’m inclined to agree with him, but mostly because I’d like to play these games on PC someday. Cough, Bloodborne, cough. A less savoury part, he also highlights, are “subscription platforms and games as a service”.

As for GTA 6, he doesn’t know if “Rockstar will jump at the chance” to ramp up the price to $80—or even $90, all-told. But he maintains that “a balance must be found between production costs and game prices.

“GTA 6 will obviously be a case in point, but if you take the example of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the game is just as phenomenal visually, despite the fact that the team only has around thirty people. This is one of the ways forward, I think, because you can make excellent games with tighter teams and budgets without compromising quality.”

It’s admittedly a little funny to have the wide-spread meme ‘I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I’m not kidding’ basically parroted in more professional, executive terms by one of the industry’s longest-standing figureheads. But he’s not entirely wrong. He’s also not exactly saying the ‘paid more to work less’ bit, given the mention of budgets.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an interesting case because (aside from the fact it was made by a bit more than 30 people—it’s just that was the size of the core dev team) I’d say the fact it looks good is more down to artstyle and aesthetic choice than the kind of raw, powerhouse technical fidelity that Rockstar flexes.

I loved the visuals and the creativity of its world, but everyone’s hair kept clipping through their necks, and I started to notice the constant reusing of scattered assets. That’s not a complaint, mind. I love a game with a reasonable budget and ambitious scope.

Even when it’s coming from a bigger developer like, say, Atlus—I’ll take the straightforward graphics of Metaphor: ReFantazio any day if the game is good. Rockstar’s beer bottles may be shiny, but they’re not mandatory for a good time.