Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has acknowledged that the company could have charged more for Grand Theft Auto 6, but it declined to do so to ensure pricing felt fair. He also shared new insight into how GTA 6 preorders are going so far, saying they’re skewing toward the $100 edition early on.
Speaking to CNBC, Zelnick said “most people” felt that Take-Two had a “great deal of pricing power” and could leverage the monumental demand for GTA 6 to charge a higher price to consumers. However, Zelnick said Take-Two decided against this based on its desire to deliver “way more value to the consumer than what we charged.” He went on to say the company did not want the game’s price point to be out of reach for people.
Prior to release, there were numerous headlines about how much GTA 6 might cost, with some saying it even deserved to be $100 based on what it’s expected to offer. In the end, Take-Two and Rockstar settled on an $80 price for the standard edition and $100 for a premium version with many digital extras.
Some theorized that keeping the GTA 6 price point in the expected range was a deliberate decision to further drive adoption and funnel people into GTA Online, which makes a lot of money via microtransactions. To be sure, Rockstar has not yet said a peep about GTA 6’s expected online mode, but it’s a safe bet some kind of evolution of GTA Online for GTA 6 is coming.
For comparison, GTA 5’s base edition launched in 2013 at $60. That same amount of money in 2026 dollars would be more than $85 due to inflation.
He said in the interview that GTA 6 preorders so far are “skewing more toward” the $100 edition. Zelnick said this makes sense because people who preorder games right away tend to be “the most avid” consumers who are less price-sensitive.
GTA 6 is a digital-only game, but there are reasons to preorder it. The game has multiple preorder bonuses for both editions of the game, including the Vintage Vice City Pack, which includes ’80s-inspired content like a classic car, special outfits and hairstyles, an exclusive weapon pattern, and a free month of GTA+.
Also in the interview, Zelnick was asked if GTA 6 might get a price cut for the holidays. He said retailers are free to charge whatever they want, but he signaled that there will be no official price cut on GTA 6 for some time. “We preserved our pricing on GTA 5 for a very long time,” he said, adding Rockstar is known to hold prices steady for longer than other games.
GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The game will be shown off in detail on August 27 via Netflix, and the event seems doomed.
