Game Companies Could Learn Wrong Lessons From GTA 6’s $80 Price, Analyst Says

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Gaming has never been more expensive. We’re here to investigate why, and help you play more while spending less. Welcome to GameSpot Cheap Week.

Grand Theft Auto 6’s standard edition will retail for $80, and as the highest-profile game to set its price this high, players are likely wondering if other game publishers will follow suit with their AAA releases. That remains to be seen, but at least one industry analyst thinks publishers could be making a mistake if they do.

As part of a wide-ranging interview with GameSpot on how a game’s price is determined, Ampere Analytics’ Rhys Elliott explained how other publishers could make pricing decisions based on GTA 6’s price, believing it opened the floodgates for every major AAA game to be $80.

“So my worry is that a lot of publishers read ‘GTA is $80’ as a green light and push their own run-of-the-mill or new-IP games to $80, when the right lesson is the opposite. What most will (and should) do instead is hold a $70 base and layer premium editions on top–$80 to $100 with early access, cosmetics, a season pass–the way it’s always been done. I’m not saying that’s ethical,