Analyst says GTA 6 should cost $200, calling it 'the last great game' made before AI

Analyst Ben Thompson, the writer behind the Stratechery newsletter, thinks Rockstar is massively undercharging for GTA 6. Speaking on TBPN, he argued the game should be priced at $200 — more than double the confirmed $80 standard edition and twice the $100 Ultimate Edition.

Thompson's case rests on the sheer scale of human effort behind the project. He described GTA 6 as "the pinnacle of triple-A craftsmanship" built through "years and years and years of blood, sweat, and tears" — and crucially, completed largely before AI development tools became widespread in the industry. That, he argues, makes it a one-of-a-kind artifact. "GTA 6 is the last great game," he said. "It was mostly all made pre-AI." He added that he feels "compelled to buy GTA 6 just in honor of it existing" and would happily pay $200 for it.

Rockstar confirmed the $80 and $100 pricing last month after weeks of speculation. Development and marketing costs are estimated somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion, which fuelled early predictions that the studio might push the price higher than any game before it. Most analysts ultimately expected Rockstar to stay conservative — a lower price gets the game into more hands, and more players means a larger pool of potential spenders in GTA Online whenever that launches. The single-player portion ships first this November on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, with the multiplayer component expected to follow later.

Thompson's $200 take is an outlier, but it lands in the middle of a broader industry conversation about whether GTA 6's $80 tag has cracked open the door for other publishers to push prices higher. IGN recently polled several analysts on exactly that question. Meanwhile, Rockstar is dealing with other friction — fans are unhappy about physical copies shipping with a download code instead of a disc, more employees are attempting to unionize, and the game is confirmed not to run at 60fps on current-gen consoles.