Last updated: 18 August 2026

GTA 6 Price Explained

GTA 6 (Grand Theft Auto VI) costs $79.99 for the Standard Edition and $99.99 for the Ultimate Edition, confirmed by Rockstar's official pre-order pages. That's above the traditional $69.99 AAA price point, and it's drawn enough investor and player pushback that Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick addressed it directly on the company's earnings call. Here's exactly what he said, and how the price stacks up.

01GTA 6 Price: The Numbers

• Standard Edition — $79.99: The complete base game, full single-player story, nothing cut.
• Ultimate Edition — $99.99: Standard Edition plus a confirmed pack of exclusive vehicles, weapons, apparel, and extras — see our Standard vs Ultimate Edition breakdown for the full list.
• Ultimate Edition upgrade: sold separately, so you don't have to decide between the two at launch — you can buy Standard now and add the upgrade later.

Both prices are confirmed directly by Rockstar on GTA 6's official pre-order pages, not third-party estimates.

02What Strauss Zelnick Said About the Price

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick addressed the GTA 6 price directly on the company's Q1 FY27 earnings call on August 7, 2026, responding to investor questions about the $79.99 figure sitting above the industry's long-standing $69.99 AAA standard.

• He called the pricing a "phenomenal value" for what the game delivers.
• He said Take-Two's goal "is not to maximize price" and that, given the level of hype and demand around GTA 6, the company "could have made any number of other pricing choices" — implying they chose restraint rather than charging the maximum the market would bear.
• He framed it as consistent with Rockstar's track record, saying the company's goal is to deliver "way more value to consumers than what we charge them."

This wasn't an off-the-cuff comment — it came in response to a direct analyst question about the pricing decision, on a call primarily focused on Take-Two's quarterly financial results.

03Why $79.99 and Not $69.99?

Zelnick's stated reasoning ties back to a broader industry argument: AAA console game prices held at $59.99 for roughly 15 years before the jump to $69.99 in 2020, and that figure stayed the standard for most releases since — even as development costs and inflation have both risen substantially. Under that framing, $79.99 for a game of GTA 6's scale is presented as catching up to costs rather than an arbitrary premium. GTA 6 wasn't the first release to cross $69.99 at all — Nintendo's Mario Kart World launched at $79.99 in mid-2025 — but it's the highest-profile game to do it.

Take-Two hasn't published exact GTA 6 development costs, and Zelnick himself has only called the project "expensive" without giving a figure. The $1 billion to $1.5 billion range that's widely cited comes from analyst estimates (reported by outlets like Business Insider), not a number Take-Two or Zelnick has confirmed.

04The NBA 2K27 Comparison

Zelnick's most concrete point of comparison was Take-Two's own back catalog: the company's other major 2026 release, NBA 2K27, stayed at the traditional $69.99 price point rather than moving to $79.99 alongside GTA 6.

That comparison matters for how to read the GTA 6 price: it's not a company-wide policy shift where every Take-Two title now costs more. Zelnick positioned it as a decision specific to GTA 6 — tied to the scale, scope, and demand for this particular game — rather than a new baseline being applied across the publisher's catalog.

05Is $79.99 High for 2026?

It's on the higher end but not unprecedented — a handful of major 2025–2026 AAA releases from other publishers had already tested $79.99 before GTA 6's pricing was confirmed, so Rockstar isn't setting an industry first. What made GTA 6's price notable is the combination of the figure itself and the scale of anticipation around the game, which is why it became a specific talking point on an earnings call rather than passing quietly.

For a purchasing decision, the more useful question is Ultimate Edition value rather than the base price debate — see our Standard vs Ultimate Edition guide for exactly what the extra $20 gets you, with Rockstar-confirmed details clearly separated from speculation.