The physical game market will be a major player for sales of Rockstar Games’ upcoming open-world action-adventure game, GTA VI, according to Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick.
During a recent interview with CNBC (via SquawkGamingYT and videotech), Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked about the current biggest sales channel for GTA VI. He responded by saying that while he believes the highest revenue will come from digital sales, the physical game market will be a big component. “I think the biggest [sales] channel will still be digital, but there will be a big physical component,” he said.
Later in the interview, Zelnick was asked about the cost of producing GTA VI. While he admitted that the production cost is indeed “high,” he refrained from giving an actual estimate. “We haven’t announced the actual cost, but we do spend a lot of money on our console and PC titles. That’s because we seek perfection in everything we do. [The] entertainment business is hit-driven…[requiring you to] invest in your properties [and[ back your creative talent.”
A recent analysis by content creator Saukko505 attempted to answer just how much GTA VI cost to make. While early estimates placed the game’s budget between 1–2 billion US Dollars, the YouTuber’s calculations suggested a bigger figure of potentially between 3 to 5 billion US Dollars. Their approach focused on estimating the total operating costs of Rockstar Games from 2019 through the expected release of GTA VI on November 19, 2026.
By analyzing publicly available financial data from Rockstar Games’ UK division, along with assumptions about employee salaries, office expenses, and marketing costs, they arrived at a baseline of roughly 3.4 billion US Dollars in expenditures. When adding estimates for global overhead, marketing (potentially up to 500 million US Dollars), and music licensing, the upper range climbed beyond 5 billion US Dollars. However, the content creator’s methodology equated total company operating costs with the development budget of a single game. Rockstar Games is a large, multi-project studio, and not all of its expenses during this period can be attributed to GTA VI.
