How much will the production of the next one cost? Grand Theft Auto, whose release has been patiently awaited by fans for several years? The studio that produces it, Rockstar games, is known for not skimping on the means to create the universe of this game which has become a worldwide social phenomenon since the release of the first GTA in 1997.
In a tweet seen more than 2.5 million times since it was posted on May 10, the Twitter account Alerte Infos advance that GTA 6 “should be the most expensive game of all time. According to this account, the game “will cost Rockstar Games between one and two billion dollars.” An astronomical amount and a wide range, one billion.
Info Alert is based on another tweet, that of the Dexerto Gaming account. In a message published on May 9, the specialized site announces the same amount and the same range, but does not cite sources. At the same time, no article is published on the site to provide more information on this subject.
This estimate had already circulated in September, when a hacker had published videos of GTA 6. A screenshot of a supposed private chat from the hacker had been published on Twitter, in which the hacker indicates that GTA 6 has been in development since 2014 and that two billion have already been spent on it, without it being known precisely what these expenses correspond to: development, marketing… Announcements that have never been confirmed by Take-Two Interactive Softwares, the owning company of Rockstar Games, which develops the game.
FAKE OFF
Is this estimate realistic? Two video game specialists interviewed by 20 minutes consider an estimate of one billion dollars “plausible”. On the other hand, given the available data, they rule out the hypothesis of a cost of two billion.
“The cost of Red Dead Redemption 2released in 2018, was estimated at around 800 million dollars: 500 million in production and 300 million in marketing”, recalls Caroline Cayol, video game journalist for Blacknut, which she presents as the “Netflix of online games”. Red Dead Redemption was developed by the same company as GTA. As for the previous GTAreleased ten years ago, had an estimated budget of $265 million.
The richness of the universe GTA, which can be explored for many hours of play, the number of people involved in the creation and the marketing costs can explain such amounts. Rockstar Games “make super polished games, with huge maps, incredible artificial intelligence”, recalls Carole Cayol. Technical constraints also explain these production costs: “Game consoles require programming quality. If you want to be on PlayStation V, it’s going to cost more than being on PlayStation IV. We also need teams that are able to adapt to the medium: PlayStation, computer…”
Behind a video game, there are many teams working: programmers, graphic designers and special effects specialists, musicians and sound designers, summarizes Stéphane Natkin, former director of the National School of Games and Interactive Digital Media. Moreover, “the production process of a video game is iterative: you make one or two versions, you test, you see what needs to be modified and so on”. The studios also publish more and more extensions or additions to the initial version, which must also be produced and distributed.
Rockstar Games is also investing in marketing: “The release of a GTA or of Red Dead Redemption is more orchestrated than a Marvel, because a Marvel there is one a year”, underlines Carole Cayol.
The industry is not characterized by its transparency on the amounts invested in the games, nor on the sales. “We have no official sales figures, which are linked to the life of the game”, notes Stéphane Natkin.
Carole Cayol already sees a beneficiary of all the speculation around GTA 6 : Rockstar Games. “It does them good, since we are talking about them. And the speculations, true or false leaksare still likely to last, since no official release date of GTA 6 has not been announced.