this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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GTA 6 is really set up for failure. There's so many expectations from gamers after all these years with no new installment. Nevertheless, I hope to be wrong about this. GTA games are always a fun sandbox to me, and hopefully GTA 6 manages to get that part right once again.
It will be the most expensive game in history, with a reputed development budget of around $2 billion. Anyone can do the math and realize that it would have to sell in ridiculous numbers to make that up. If it doesn't capture the magic of past GTA releases, it will be a massive money loser.
There's close to zero chance that GTA VI doesn't make $2B.
That's grossing $2 billion. But they'll still lose money at that point. They will have to net $2 billion, which won't happen until they sell like $4 billion or more.
Assuming that their revenue only came from boxed sales and not the behemoth that is GTA Online, they gross $2B with under 30M copies sold. GTA V has, to date, sold a little shy of 200M copies. GTA VI will be fine. In fact, GTA V made so much money that if they pissed away $2B on GTA VI and it sold zero copies, the company would still be fine. They've been making half a billion in profit per year for a long time now.
Actually no. They probably did not gross $2 billion until they sold around 40-50 million copies.
GTA6 will have to fully match the success of GTA5 to be a success. That is the risk here.
No, it actually doesn't, and I outlined why in the comment you replied to. In fact, I just checked what GTA V did sales-wise, and that 30M copies sold was passed in its first six weeks. It brought in $2B in its first six months. Of course GTA VI is going to do that again, regardless of what it does in subsequent years. And this is still not factoring in the revenue that GTA Online brings in. It doesn't have to be anywhere close to being as successful as GTA V in order to make back the $2B they spent making it.
Not everything sold at full price. By six month, it was probably closer to 50M. GTA Online has a much higher cost basis. It is not a magic trick to generate free cash. Again, they need to NET $2 billion, not gross $2 billion.
Again, GTA6 really has to match the success of GTA5 or else it will lose money. You don't know if it can.
The first evidence I can find of a sale for GTA V was in 2015, over a year after launch, and the first price cut appears to be in mid-2018, five years after launch, meaning that they could continue to sell copies at that $60 for five straight years without much extra motivation for consumers. Whatever you think you the cost basis is for GTA Online, it is still a pittance compared to what they'll bring in.
Funny then that you seem to know that this is some enormous risk instead of probably the safest investment a video game company has ever made.
It did not sell at full price everywhere.
And again, it has to NET $2 billion, not gross. You are simply deceiving yourself if you think it is guaranteed to make money.
Hey, feel free to put some money on the line and call me a fortune teller when this game comes out profitable. Nothing is guaranteed, but a new GTA game, especially after GTA V, is about the closest thing to guaranteed success you'll see in this industry.
I’m expecting they will introduce some online service like GTA Online along with a slew of micro transactions to make up the budget. I can’t really say why but I’m getting the feeling this will be a always-online game
That's lifetime budget, so including all marketing and development after release as well
I think everyone will be fine with a slightly improved GTA V set in Florida / Miama. One of the protagonists is also a thirst trap latina and the gameplay mechanics in the leak seemed nice. Like with read dead but improved.
Imagine the satire you could put in a new GTA game set in Florida these days.
Plus, where does this franchise really have left to go?
It doesn't even really have to go anywhere except having new characters in a new city. There aren't a ton of crime story settings in video games these days, let alone GTA's brand of it.
I mean, personally I don't care about the story or anything. If I can just mess around in a big fancy sandbox like all the other GTA games then it'd good for me. But GTA 6 has big expectations to contend with, so they're gonna aim high. There's the chance that they mess that up, either with scummy monetization or DRM, or by releasing a trainwreck of a game. Or they fck it up by releasing a soulless game like Saints Row did