Preorders for Grand Theft Auto 6 opened at midnight Wednesday, and the game’s pricing was revealed at the same time. In Israel, the standard edition will cost 319 shekels and the special edition 399 shekels, the highest prices anywhere in the world. The U.S. price, announced a few hours earlier by publisher Take-Two and developer Rockstar, is $80 for the standard version and $100 for the special edition, making the Israeli prices 34% higher than in the United States.
The pricing gap is not unique to GTA 6, and the article notes that it also appears in other games, especially those made by large publishers. After Israel, Hungary has the next-highest prices, with the game effectively costing the equivalent of $100 and $127. Prices in Switzerland and Britain are also about 20% to 27% above U.S. levels. At the low end are South Korea, Japan and India, where the standard edition is around $60 and the special edition about $70 to $80.
The U.S. pricing is itself unusual. High-profile games have long sold for $60, and many recently moved to $70. Before GTA 6, the only game priced at $80 was Nintendo’s Mario Kart World, which drew heavy online criticism. Rockstar and GTA 6 are now facing similar backlash, especially because the $100 special edition includes locked in-game stores and small story additions for Jason and Lucia, the characters players will control.
The game is set to launch on November 19 for PlayStation 5 and current-generation Xbox consoles. On launch, it will not have a physical disc edition for the first time; retail copies will contain only a digital redemption code, apparently to prevent leaks like those that occurred before GTA 5’s 2013 release. Reports also say even reviewers will not receive discs and will have to travel to a Rockstar studio to play and review it.
Pricing and development costs are fueling interest because GTA 6 is reported to have the highest development budget in video game history. Take-Two chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick told Bloomberg that Rockstar teams were given "unlimited financial resources and all the infrastructure needed to reach perfection," which has fed speculation that between $1 billion and $1.5 billion was spent on the project. GTA 5, released in late 2013 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, has since become the most profitable entertainment product in history, with about $10 billion in revenue and more than 230 million copies sold.
