Grand Theft Auto 6 could be one of the most expensive games ever in terms of its budget, and this kind of investment may only be sustainable for a small group of games, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said in an interview.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Zelnick giant investments only make sense for “massive blockbusters,” and “that’s super hard to do.” Of course, GTA 6 is expected to be one of those games, but the industry overall is in for even tougher times ahead if production costs keep ramping up.
“We certainly can’t deal with exponential growth–we probably can’t even deal with linear growth–in production costs,” he said. “So everyone puts pressure on everyone, ourselves included. But on balance, we want to make bigger hits, and we’re prepared to take appropriate risks to do so.”
GTA is Take-Two’s biggest franchise, but the company has other big-name brands like BioShock and Borderlands. Zelnick said “there really is” a ceiling in terms of how much those brands could grow if costs do not come down. “It really means that we’re going to have to be smarter about how we do things or certain titles can’t get made,” he said.
Zelnick went on to say that Take-Two is “exploring” if AI could “help us get there,” but he said “technology” is a better word to use when talking about what may help the company drive efficiencies and potentially bring down development costs.
“Certainly, our bet is not going to be to give consumers less. Our bet is not going to be make games lighter, shorter, worse,” he said. “I’m hopeful that we can create more efficiencies with technology. We’ll see.”
Before this, Zelnick said GTA 6 was an “expensive” game to make, though Take-Two has not offered any specifics about the game’s budget. Zelnick said his ambition is to give developers “unlimited” financial and creative resources. On the subject of AI-driven cost savings, Zelnick said Take-Two has not observed this yet, and it may never.
Zelnick and many others in the field have been making the case that game production costs are unsustainable and that something has to change or the pain that the video game industry is going through will only get worse. To help cover what are no doubt massive production costs for GTA 6, many are wondering if Rockstar is going to charge more than $70 for the game. That remains to be seen, but a Bank of America stock analyst recently said Rockstar should charge $80 for GTA 6 to help convince other publishers to raise prices for their own games to make the market more sustainable.
GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. It’s not coming to PC at launch because PC is not the “core” market for the game.