GTA 6’s budget isn’t $2,000,000,000 but it’s three times more than most games

Analysts believe GTA 6’s budget is smaller than previously rumoured, but it’ still the most expensive video game ever made.

The infamous Rockstar hack from 2022 leaked a lot of info about GTA 6, including its setting of Vice City and the previously rumoured Bonnie and Clyde style protagonists, but it also mentioned an alleged $2 billion budget for the game’s development.

While Rockstar Games and publisher Take-Two are no doubt spending a lot of money on GTA 6, $2 billion (which is about £1.47 billion) is a staggering amount that would handily make GTA 6 the most expensive video game ever made – and far more than any movie.

New estimates, though, say that, no, GTA 6’s budget isn’t that big and is actually much smaller, at a mere $1 billion to $1.5 billion (about £734 million to £1.1 billion).

This is according to a report by Business Insider, which cites industry analysts as part of an interview with Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick. Unsurprisingly, Zelnick declined to comment on GTA 6’s budget when asked, only acknowledging that it ‘was expensive.’

Even at $1 billion, this would still be more than double almost every other video game budget known. Sony, for example, spent $300 million (about £220 million) on the development of Spider-Man 2, while the only budget known to be significantly more than $300 million is the upwards of $700 million (nearly £514 million) Activision spends on its Call Of Duty games.

To be fair, publishers almost never officially confirm budgets, so there may be other games, particularly online titles, that are close to or more than Call Of Duty. However, a recent report suggested that around $300 million has become the new standard for current gen triple-A games.

Such a high budget is to be expected when GTA 6 is not only set to be a huge game boasting state-of-the-art graphics, but is also following up on GTA 5, the most successful traditional video game ever made.

It’s even been suggested that GTA 6 could flop if it sold only 10 million copies in its first day, although that’s extremely unlikely as it should perform better than GTA 5, which sold 11.21 copies in its first 24 hours.

Even if that estimated budget is accurate, it’ll no doubt increase since GTA 6 is expected to see long term post-launch support, with the success of GTA Online guaranteeing that GTA 6 will receive its own online multiplayer mode.

It’s also rumoured that GTA 6 will emulate Roblox and let players create and sell their own in-game content and, in a separate Bloomberg interview, Zelnick seemed to insinuate that Rockstar is being given unlimited resources to work with.

‘We have the most amazing creative teams. We not only encourage them to pursue their passions, we insist that they do it. We try to give them unlimited financial, creative human resources and then they aim to deliver perfection,’ Zelnick said.

Business Insider’s sources have also repeated the prediction that GTA 6 could cost £100 or more, but Zelnick has talked about wanting to offer the game at a ‘reasonable’ price.

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