Rockstar said GTA 6 costs $79.99 across PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, confirming a $10 jump from the standard $70 we’ve seen this generation. The Ultimate Edition, meanwhile, is $20 more, priced $99.99.
GTA 6 physical copies do not include a disc, Rockstar has confirmed. They’re just a code in a box
Good thing I don’t give a single fuck about getting this on release, or multiplayer, or any of the nonsense here. I’ll wait you out Rockstar, and hope the rest of the gaming community is finally tired of your shit.
GTA 6 physical copies do not include a physical copy, Rockstar has confirmed. They’re just a code in a box
So in other words, that is a fraudulent claim but at this point, who’s counting? I came from a time and place where, if.a company would make such a bullshit claim, they couldn’t get away with “but nobody would ever believe that a physical copy would actually include a physical copy!”, they would be fined heavily.
I propose we make such bullshit claims a criminal act for which the complete C suite can be jailed. Let’s see how fast companies start behaving!
I do wonder though, if the physical game contains a code, the non physical game contains… Nothing? Air? Vacuum? A black hole that swallows you hole? (Yes, that is a bad pun)
I’m already sick of this of this games shit
It’s like this every time a new GTA comes out.
Hahaha
I get it, but…it’s gonna be a banger. Rockstar may be a terrible place to work, but they make good games. GTAV and RDR2 are among my favorite game experiences.
I just wish it were releasing for PC at the same time.
used to make good games…
now they make stores and money pits with graphics and mechanics slapped on top.
stop defending these companies who have already proven to not give two fucks about you and want to extort more and more from you.
grow a pair of balls FFS… actually stand up for what’s right and stop caving to your simple mind of, oh but it’s kinda fun
used to make good games…
The last two new games they made were, if I am correct, GTAV and RDR2. The two games I mentioned as having loved. What “used to”?
stop defending these companies who have already proven to not give two fucks about you
Where was I defending anyone? I said I expect the game will be good because the last two they made I loved.
and want to extort more and more from you.
They haven’t gotten a dime from me for anything except game releases, so if you’re trying to complain about GTA Online or Red Dead Online…that ain’t me. As far as I’m concerned, they made products I liked that I paid for. And my guess is the next one will also be something I like.
grow a pair of balls FFS… actually stand up for what’s right
I don’t think falling in line and following your feelings on this topic would be me growing a pair of balls…
and stop caving to your simple mind of, oh but it’s kinda fun
RDR2 was art. That game made me cry. It told a beautiful, tragic story any told it incredibly well. “It’s kinda fun” is hilariously reductive.
But even if it were only kinda fun, it’s a video game. That’s the whole point, right? It’s supposed to be entertaining. It being a piece of art is just the cherry on top.
I didn’t care for RDR2. Too much interactive movie. The endgame was fun but even then there’s goddamn cut scenes for basically every major side quest as well. The main story was so fucking tedious, as there were sections where you had legitimately 50% cut scenes. So that means when you want to pick it up for an hour, you spend 15 minutes doing inventory management shit, 20 minutes of cut scenes, and 20 minutes of actual gameplay. If felt almost impossible to play if you didn’t have 3+ hour chunks to dedicate to it.
I’m sorry, but I’ll die on this mountain - game stories are just never very good. They feel special because you’re a participant, but they’d be be c tier made for TV movies without that context. Tons of games used to tell stories within the gameplay just fine. I think resorting to lengthy cut scenes to move the narrative is honestly just lazy.
This has some serious “GAMERS RISE UP!!!” energy. It’s a video game, and people on Lemmy need to calm the hell down. Buying games was never about “actually standing up for what’s right”. Get off the high horse.
used to make good games… now they make stores and money pits with graphics and mechanics slapped on top.
Their last game was Red Dead Redemption 2 and it was critically acclaimed and loved. I don’t personally care about GTA 6 but I can see why people would be excited for their next game.
Oh that was NEVER going to happen. They found out with GTA V and RDR2 that they can triple dip on sales at full price by staggering releases and upgrades. Rockstar will never release everything at the same time again.
They found out with GTA V and RDR2…
Not to be pedantic, but Rockstar have always staggered their PC ports all the way back to GTA III. Their strategy is literally 25+ years old at this point and I don’t see it changing.
Never say never. The console landscape has changed dramatically since both of those games came out. PC took a lot of market share, and the console install base at the time of GTA V’s release was way higher than it is now.
Never say never.
Rockstar only loses money by releasing both at the same time. PC-only gamers will wait to get it on PC, but the gamers that also have consoles and don’t want to wait will buy it on console, and then buy it again on PC when that releases in roughly a year (just like GTA V and RDR2). It was never launching on PC at the same time as consoles, the chances of that were 0% after Rockstar saw the multiple millions of dollars in extra sales they got thanks to those staggered releases.
The chances get significantly higher when the console player base is smaller and trending down. Investors want to see the biggest entertainment launch in history every time, which is doable when you’re reaching a larger addressable market. The other headwind they’re facing right now is that people on the fence for a PS5 are maybe less inclined to buy one just for GTA now that it’s gotten significant price hikes. Someone impatient who may have been willing to double dip is probably less so.
GTA6 is still going to do gangbusters with exactly this strategy, but the market is changing, and it could affect how things play out in the future.
I was going to buy it in ~5 years on PC for the single player campaign…
But if they’re describing it as a “single player experience” it’s going to be a shitty offshoot of multiplayer instead of a ring campaign that has a multiplayer slapped on.
It sounds like a minor difference, but it means the entire “experience” is just reskinned multiplayer and will push people there so they spend money.
This one will likely be bad
But if they’re describing it as a “single player experience” it’s going to be a shitty offshoot of multiplayer instead of a ring campaign that has a multiplayer slapped on.
This is a massive stretch with zero evidence…
You could have asked me to fill in the missing steps you’re having trouble filling in…
That would have resulted in you gaining understanding about this specifically, and how people use logic and critical thinking in general.
That’s crazy man, instead you did that, and now I’ll never see an actual question you ask me.
Haha, what kind of asinine comment is this?
I think you should do some self-reflecting and look into solving your issues before lashing out at other people
Same thing man.
You could have asked why I think it’s obvious the single player will just be a hamstring multiplayer, and I’d have explained it.
Would’ve been so easy
Yes, I could have, but I honestly don’t care about your opinion and you don’t seem like a nice person to talk to.
I don’t know what’s going on in your life but hopefully you’re just having a bad moment.
You could have asked me to fill in the missing steps you’re having trouble filling in…
Dude, come on, you say completely unsubstantiated bullshit on here all the time. It isn’t their job to ask you to explore your stupid, baseless, bullshit claim.
(In fact, you can’t see this right now because you’ve told me you’ve blocked me for debunking your paper-thin, vibes-based bullshit in the past. So I for example couldn’t ask if I wanted. lmao)
Where are you getting that it’s an offshoot of the mulitplayer? We’ve seen the cinematic trailers and such by now. There are written characters, and you’re not just playing as the create-a-character “John Auto”. I think they’re just saying it’s a single player experience so that people looking for GTA Online know that it won’t be there at launch.
GTA Online has introduced many characters and campaigns. It just doesn’t center around a specific voiced protagonist, or hold any kind of long-term writing stakes. It’s possible some of those cinematics come from their online missions as a result.
Lots of live service games have made that effort; apparently even Fortnite builds some semblance of “story” to justify each battle pass? (I don’t play it so I’m not sure)
Sure, but we know exactly who the protagonists are. It’s the Bonnie and Clyde dynamic. It’s a single player campaign. This isn’t a guess; we know this. Even if they hadn’t said this publicly, we knew this from leaks from years ago.
Part of my point is that we don’t know how much of its implied expansive story is actually singleplayer. A game with three singleplayer tutorials missions that end with “Now play multiplayer!” can likely make a cinematic story-based trailer based around key protagonists, and advertise “A singleplayer experience”; Battlefield has basically done this several times.
I certainly hope it leans towards a complete singleplayer, but the past decade of GTA Online makes me worried otherwise.
I very strongly believe the wording is just there to let you know that GTA Online won’t be available at launch, much like with RDR2 and GTAV. I’m actually surprised so many people are reading it any other way.
We saw the same thing for GTAV.
And singleplayer immediately got dumped and ignored the second Online came out and the idiots with more money than sense started dumping texas sized dumptrucks into rockstars lap on the daily.
Single player was “dumped” in that they delivered it and then didn’t deliver more of it. Story DLC was new back then, but it’s always been expensive and a low return on investment. I don’t think they’re going to make single player DLC. I have no reason to think they’re not making the same type of single player campaign that they’ve been making. For whatever reason, this community is full of people making up a bunch of information about this game instead of reading the facts in front of them.
and you’re not just playing as the create-a-character “John Auto”.
Not a fan of GTA 3, eh?
I think canonically his name ended up being Claude? But no, I mean the way GTA Online does its missions is that every NPC will talk to you, but your character is silent. And no create-a-character system outputs characters that look as good as the protagonists of GTA 6, where they have human actors as the reference models and performance capture.
I think he’s been Claude Speed even back in GTA 2. My point was that “Claude Speed” is practically the same name as “John Auto”.
Oh, I went with John Auto because whenever there’s a Street Fighter trailer with the generic create-a-fighter for World Tour mode, people call that guy John Street Fighter. We definitely haven’t seen create-a-characters up to this point.
cinematic trailers are just lies… they are never true representations of the game. they are afterall, CINEMATIC…
the word experience, implies it’s NOT single player… but you can experience what single player could have been, if they gave a shit.
gta5 already proved they don’t give a single fick about customers, or single player.
companies use words for specific reasons… to mislead, deceive and lie to you. they make you think A, when Infact they are delivering 🖕
There’s a big difference between “this cut-scene shows something cooler than what I can do when I’m in control” and “extrapolating the word ‘experience’ out to mean that anything single player is going to be half-assed”.
to kinda preface, I’m not saying they aren’t well made it whatever… it’s just disinformation about the product.
cinematic trailers are trailers for the cutscenes. Trailers are an actual representation of the game.
they added a word (cinematic, or experience) to be able to sell you on something that is not a true representation of the product. ie lies/disinformation.
All companies are guilty of it.
simulated, made with, 100% [noun], no added, * ,zero, new bigger size, etc…etc…etc… … it’s all the same. big corporations lie with everything they slave us out to create/produce/distribute/sell.
Okay, but you filled in the blanks with a whole lot of your imagination instead of correctly coming to the conclusion that they used the language they did to indicate that multiplayer won’t be releasing in this SKU, at least at first.
Sounds like they just mean no gtao…
Wow
Contrary to what the industry is hoping, this will not allow other games to sell at $80. Customers are already having a hard time justifying $70.
I don’t remember the last time I paid more than $15-20. I have too much a backlog and too many more important things to spend money on than an inflated day-one AAA. Even GTA6 is a maybe for me, and that’s a solid-looking addition to a series I’ve been playing for almost 30 years.
I only just finally caved and got Cyberpunk recently, and that’s because it was on sale for ~$18USD.
Waiting for a price drop is the only way unless you have magic money burning a hole in your pocket and you’re dying for a game that never goes on sale (Factorio I’m looking at you)
I’m currently on my first play through of RDR2 after waiting for it to come down in price.
Two of my favorite games of all time got remakes and are frequently on sale on Steam. MGS3 and FFTactics. Even on sale neither one is justifiable at $50 and $35. Death Stranding 2 at $70. Nahh. Pragmata at $60. Nope. Hell even Tempest Rising at $35 is too much for me right now. This hobby has been pushed to the extreme margins. There’s a large center girth of games I’d love to play but calling it justifiable is hard for anything over $20 right now.
30+ = trash
60% off or more and the game still costs $30 = trash
Electronic Arts. … Activision Blizzard. … Rockstar Games. … Epic Games. …
all trash companies that make stores with game mechanics…
OK, seriously now: Why bother saying you’re going to “release a physical version” that’s nothing more than a code inside an empty plastic box? I really don’t get it.
Many retail games still allow you to have the full game without any service account or internet connection.
How does that work with a “Code-in-a-box”?
So people can give it as a physical gift. That’s really it.
Gift cards exist. Why not gift cards shaped videogames? Why a nearly empty box?
Some people like to still have the box for collection purposes. Personally, I agree. I think the only physical option at this point should be something like a collectible steelbook if all they’re going to have is a redemption code.
i like starfields steelbook. the code is on a real version of the in game credits. its heavy and fun to hold
its heavy and fun to hold
BigBananaDealer - 2026
Huge “I like shorts. They’re comfy and easy to wear.” energy.
im not quite sure what this message conveys
I’m just saying the phrase you singled out has the same feeling as this heavily memed phrase.
Yeah, Steelbooks and the like make sense, but wanting to buy a piece of plastic that’s just a waste of space… It’s the worse of physical and the digital format, the worse of both worlds.
(The anti Hannah Montana!)
But does it run on Hannah Montana Linux?
I’m not entirely sure, but the game disc can still be sold. Isn’t it? If it is just a code you enter and then don’t need the disc anymore, then you cannot sell it. Its basically a digital code only, like on Steam / PC. But if the game disc acts as a license, then it will download the rest of the game and you still need the disc to play. In that case you can sell the disc and no longer play the game. Similar to how game key cards work on Switch 2.
Another reason why big publishers want to have a physical release is, that they have a presence everywhere where “normal” games are also sold. Maybe your mom buys it for you, or a friend gives a gift.
But what’s the use of the box in “code-in-a-box”? It’s so fucking useless is insulting.
Would you rather it be sold as a piece of cardboard with a scratch off reveal code?
I just told you a few reasons from both sides. Another reason I can think of is, game cannot leak before official download day. The biggest reason probably is, because its cheaper to produce.
It’s extraordinarily cheaper to produce, and it kills the second hand game market. Both of which have been thorns in the side of AAA gaming companies for decades. Nobody else had the balls to force online only games (partially due to EU laws). A few tried (I forget the specifics), but they got smacked down and reconsidered. Everyone’s watching to see if this works, and if it does, brick and mortar game stores will go the way of the DVD rental.
To play devil’s advocate: physical disc releases are a security nightmare.
Pirate groups pay big money to get access to disc images before release so they can have a crack ready on day 1, and leakers would love to get early access so they can drip feed information for social media cred. The bounty for an early iso of GTA VI would be astronomical.
I do however agree that releasing a ‘physical edition’ that’s just a code in a box is a waste of everyone’s time and money, not to mention materials destined for landfill.
My problem isn’t so much that the box is empty (though that’s part of it), but rather: Why sell an empty box in the first place? Why not focus on digital and stop wasting everyone’s time?
Because people still want to buy the box? And this makes it so you can’t resell it. So they are focusing on the part of digital they care about, no resell. While still getting sales that are bought as gifts or people that have a physical collection and want the case.
Resell what, the empty box??
That’s way, the people with slow Internet will have a nice box to look at while their download fail.
Now that’s a reasonable response lol
To sell in physical stores so parents and other people can buy them as gifts.
OK, but why an nearly empty box!? Why not, idk, a card with the code or something? Why a goddamn box with a little piece of paper in it? At least Nintendo’s key-cards are something (shitty, but something nonetheless)
It needs to look as much of as a game as the others, that’s why they make a box for a code.
Which is a stupid reason but sales people are like this so.
Nobody in the right mind is buying AAA games at launch. They always go on sale a few months later. But it’s GTA… so… its going to sell like hot cakes.
Plenty of folks in their right mind are buying AAA games at launch. Being in the zeitgeist, and talking with other folks when they also experienced the same creative work, has value. It’s the same reason folks see movies in the theater instead of waiting for streaming or a boxed release.
I buy many at launch, and sell them a few weeks later with a small loss. Not going do that with GTA 6 as there is no disc version, so I’ll wait for a discount. Plenty of other things to play.
The $80 launch price is to target the brazillions of gamers who literally only buy GTA, COD, and Sports Game every year. Easy to justify spending a lot of money on a game when it’s the only game you play.
I learned we have a word(s) for those people now: Ball and Gun Gamers
Noup, standard wasn’t 70.
Standard was 59,99 and will always be 59,99. Never forget, never forgive.
Seize everything this massive world has to offer with the GTA 6: Ultimate Edition, an exclusive collection of premium vehicles, weapons, apparel, and action around every corner. Ultimate Edition bonuses are threaded across all aspects of Jason and Lucia’s story, with new items uncovered behind each chapter.
Gaming is so fucked.
I think gaming is in the best place it’s ever been, personally. There are more games in all genres (and hell, even new genres!) than ever before, across pretty much all price points. GTA and Rockstar do not define the gaming landscape.
You are right, the indie space is booming. I meant big gaming, the mainstream triple A crap. But some kind of shitty practices being accepted by people in AAA games, does bleed down to some smaller studios indulging.
Elden ring and baldurs gate 3 were peak, as long as I get something like that every few years im chilling
I’m not a big fan of cheating during single player “experiences” but if they’re going to lock “premium weapons” behind a paywall, I’m absolutely cheating to get that shit.
I’ll wait for a trainer to come out. Love that I can do that and import GTA:O assets into the single player mode.
I’ll wait till its available for $49.99 or less
Oh well, might play it when it’s on sale in five years. Also wtf is a “single player experience”? Is this going to focus almost completely on GTA Online?
There’s a lot more negativity surrounding that wording than I expected. For me, it’s like the best part of the announcement probably. I gives me hope that the game will be solid, and that an online component wasn’t the main focus (which some people were concerned about, given the financial success of GTA Online).
I don’t know why they chose that exact wording, but it’s really weird and sounds like the single-player campaign is just some by-product of GTA Online. Maybe it’s not, maybe it’s going to be great, I’ll wait anyway, I’m not paying 80€ for this.
Interesting because I read it the exact opposite. It reads to me like reassurance that single player was their primary focus.
I see no reason to believe that the “single player experience” is anything other the campaign you’d expect out of a new Grand Theft Auto.
It’s normal to be suspicious in the enshitification era.
Hopefully it’s a normal campaign. And maybe it’s a single player mode based on the true game which is the mmo. An afterthought. Like how ESO can be played without interacting with other players, but it’s not fun. A single player “experience”
Also wtf is a “single player experience”? Is this going to focus almost completely on GTA Online?
Pretty sure it means the exact opposite. GTA Online is NOT a single player experience in any way shape or form. They’re saying that it isn’t going to have that at launch.
experience means it’s not true singleplayer campaign…
it’s marketing lies… stop eating the nonsense
No, “experience” is just corporate shareholder wording for this type of thing. You’re looking at this statement from a gamer’s perspective, but this is a company announcing the price of a product. Statements worded like this are talking to shareholders, regardless of where the statement is being made. Rockstar doesn’t give a shit about what gamers think about the price, this is Rockstar giving shareholders a unit price they can base estimated revenue from.
If they were referring to multipalyer in any way, tehy would mention it directly. Either as multiplayer, or more likely in reference to an upgrade for GTA Online. But again… that will be a later update so they can squeeze more sales from an already released product, and to remind people that didn’t buy it originally that GTA VI released and is getting updates.
Let’s be honest, if Rockstar would decided to sell the game for $100 the people would pay for it without any problem, and even so it would win a lot of awards. Because Rockstar is a piece of shit.
I don’t get why GTA is so loved honestly, it’s just an rape, assault and stoner simulator.
rape, assault and stoner simulator.
what the fuck, why would you lump smoking weed in with rape and assault
Since at least GTA4, Rockstar has nearly cornered the market on crime stories like you’d find in Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorcese, Guy Ritchie, or Michael Mann movies. The appeal is playing out an action game that would feel like one of those crime stories.
Interesting point, thanks for pointing that
The ultimate edition doesn’t include anything important, but the whole premise that they can charge $20 for something that is already in the game and is artificially hidden from you doesn’t spark joy in my heart. I was going to wait for independent reviews anyway, but with this nonsense I’ll probably wait for a solid discount too. Besides, I don’t expect good performance on my non-pro PS5.
Rockstar fired 31 employees for forming a union. If you care about workers rights, now is the time to put your money where your mouth is.
Sadly, I predict a repeat of this classic:
“Features a ‘Single Player Experience’ at launch”
wtf does that even mean. Was there a possibility it would be launched without the story or campaign? If so, that implies that online was their primary target and they just threw a story in there to prevent people from hating it.
Also why is it a “single player experience” and not, oh you know, the game itself. Sadly that phrasing uses enough weasel words that it makes me think that Online is the first-class citizen and the story is just a tacked on afterthought.
Needless to say I’m waiting for the game to come out and some further reviews before committing to anything.
From the FAQ on the PlayStation store page:
Q: Does Grand Theft Auto VI have any multiplayer modes or features?
A: Grand Theft Auto VI is a single-player experience.
Meaning that on its release date, there will be no multiplayer. We all know the mulitplayer is coming, whether it’s added later (like it was to GTA5 or RDR2) or if it’s a separate item in the store. Taking an educated guess, it’s probably just going to be added on, so that it can leverage the same game installation.
Speaking of game installation, dare I ask, do we know how many terabytes this thing will take up?
Thank you. It’s like nobody can read and understand sentences anymore. They are as clear as corporate speak allows
Not that I agree with Nintendo charging $80 for Mario Kart, but at least Nintendo had decency to give people an actual physical copy, not lock content behind an additional $20 upgrade and not fire the people who made the game for unionising.
Does Mario Kart actually come on the cartridge or is it one of those game key cards?
It comes on the cartridge. Afaik so far all first party games have been actual physical releases, except Pokopia (which I think is only published by Nintendo and not developed by them).
