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GTA 6's Development Costs Estimated to Be Over $1bn, as Take-Two Head Admits It's an 'Expensive' Endeavour
Take-Two is estimated to have spent between $1bn and $1.5bn on GTA 6, according to Business Insider via IGN. This dwarfs comparable AAA titles — Horizon Forbidden West ($212m), The Last of Us Part 2 ($220m), and Bungie's Marathon ($200m) — by an order of magnitude. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick called the project an "expensive" endeavour without confirming a specific figure.
Key update
GTA 6 parent company Take-Two is estimated to have spent between $1bn and $1.5bn on Rockstar's upcoming game, according to Business Insider (via IGN), which based these staggering figures on estimations made by industry analysts as part of an interview with Take-Two's head honcho, Strauss Zelnick.
Why it matters
To compare other big triple-A video game releases from recent years: in 2023 it was revealed that Horizon Forbidden West cost $212m to develop over five years between 2017 and 2022, with 300 employees attached to the project. At the same time, fellow PlayStation exclusive The Last of Us Part 2 was revealed to have cost $220m to make, with an employee count of roughly 200. More recently, Bungie's Marathon reboot reportedly had a budget of $200m. In other words, a single GTA 6 is estimated to have cost roughly five to seven times more than some of the most expensive games ever made.
What to watch
So, yes, big games have been costly to develop for quite some time, but GTA 6 is costly with extra emphasis on each and every letter in the word.
Context
Zelnick himself has stated GTA 6 has been an 'expensive' endeavour, though he refrained from putting an actual figure on how much the game is costing. Given analysts are talking about a figure over one billion dollars, this feels like quite an understatement from the Take-Two head.
Bottom line
It is not just GTA 6's development cost that has caused discussion in the industry. Just how much Rockstar and Take-Two will charge for its next car-boosting romp has also stirred up discourse, and early last year a report suggested GTA 6 could retail for $100. In April, Zelnick discussed the game's price and stressed that the company's 'job is to charge way, way, way less of the value delivery.' At this time, Zelnick called 'making the most spectacular piece of entertainment on Earth, in history' a 'pretty daunting challenge.'
Update 6
GTA 6 is currently scheduled to release on 19th November across PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.