It's so interesting to me that as a PC gamer, they chose to just .. not let me buy the game. It's not even an option, for any price. I'd have to wait multiple years for them to decide to go for another cash grab and do a PC release. No thanks, I just won't play.
I've never understood this. For most games by the time they release on PC the hype has died down and they get a tiny fraction of the sales they would have gotten with a simultaneous release.
Rockstar was very open as to why: PC players are a fraction of a fraction of their income. Xbox One players (yes, the previous gen) give them more money than PC players for GTA Online.
Unlike consoles, general purpose computers are designed to be operated with a keyboard and mouse, not a controller. Yes, you can use steam in big picture mode, but you still have to launch it.
But this was the case since forever. Albeit I didn't play it on a PC till 2016 and kept playing GTA San Andreas till I knew Los Santos like the back of my hand.
This has been the case with every Rockstar game since GTA 3, and it works for them. It sells a ton on consoles, piracy is severely limited, still sells wildly on PC, and lets them "double dip" on sales because some people will buy it twice.
Game box collectors, people who want to offer a physical wrapped gift, kids who see it while shopping and nag their parents each time they pass near the boxes... on that last part it's pretty cheap advertising in every shopping center.
But mostly the goal is to remove the resale/rent/borrow ability of people who purchase this game unfortunately.
I remember when Xbox One launched, Xbox had this great idea. If you have a physical game, you can turn it into a digital one and then the physical disc is worthless.
The bad PR was insane. They backtracked. But now I wish I had this. I use the Xbox Series S for travel and it doesn’t have a physical drive so I can’t play my physical discs.
It’s even worse because you can find used games on eBay for <$5 but those same games to buy digitally are >$20.
Excuse my silly question, but what's the point of pre-buying a game, if it will only exists as a downloadable copy. I get you want to gift it for xmas, but for the rest of players? The point of pre-sale is to make sure you will get one when it comes out?
I personally agree that pre-buying is silly in today's world of digital distribution. But I will point out that most pre-sales now come with a digital item or two or five that's exclusive to pre-orders. Additionally, if you pre-order, you can sometimes download the game a day or so ahead of time, and then have it "unlock" when it's released, allowing you to play at minute 1. I'd wager GTA VI is well over 100 GBs, so this is actually a reasonable benefit, especially considering the potential for CDN crashes at launch time.
That's right. I forgot about the ability to pre-download the game before the official release, which might help the servers. That also remove the joke "Patch day 1 (of the size of the game)" which I always found ridiculous but became a standard practice.
Having the game of that size is the only excuse I accept for not releasing a physical version, but because no blu-ray will handle it, it starts darker days for game preservation. I love the fact that I will be able to undust my old PS4 in a couple of years and play GTA V without relying on the PlayStation Store. But we knew these days were counted.
One reason for doing it is that download servers will be absolutely slammed on release. A pre-order will often times come with the bulk of the download happening a few days in advance, and then a very small download at release that contains a small amount of data that makes the game playable. This is an argument for buying a week out, not 5 months out though.
Another is that there are very often below-RRP deals for games in advance, but if you buy it on launch day you'll be paying RRP.
In addition to what the sibling comment wrote, many platforms will let you download the game in advance, and "unlock" immediately at launch. Some people want to be among the first to play, I guess.
There was a time when pre-sales came with a special box that included a physical map or a mouse pad or some other bit of game merch. I don't think that's true anymore, though.
Though I think there have been some games that let you start playing two or three days earlier.
Is this after aggressive optimization? Size inflation for AAA games has truly reached new heights. If it had to be released via physical media that would require 3-4 BD discs at minimum.
I've been on a retro gaming binge lately because I strongly believe the constraints & limitations of older platforms yielded a better product imo.
It is just speculation at this point, no official numbers yet. Some leaks have suggested a size about that, and it seems to be in-part corroborated by the physical editions being download codes.
Generally it doesn't make sense, but in this particular case the servers are going ti be so overloaded with people trying to download it that it might be worth it to preloaded the game. Now of course they're probably going to have separate author servers that will probably also be overloaded with everyone trying to login at once (why does a single player game need you to log in first? good question!) so imo you're probably going to be screwed either way
The benefit for the player is they get a few additional in-game cosmetic unlocks, and the benefit for the publisher is they get a large wad of cash in advance and and an excuse to generate a new hype cycle surrounding the game.
Some backstory - I like gaming quite a bit - but more of a personal archivalist. I have basically all games I've ever played on physical media and try to keep someway to play them offline - just jailbroke my 360 to be able to play games from HDD incase the DVD drive broke. Anyway...
I saw the no DVD and was initially devastated. I'm in two minds - I saw one post that basically said "it won't contain a DVD at launch".. if I read between the lines, though I'm not sure I see the value incentive for Rockstar, but...
If they hypothetically launched with physical boxes with digital download codes, okay... This would definitely be in the name of re-sellers (as they've stated). But this is the same as piracy, which has always been, not that "we need to stop people from pirating our games for eternity" but "we need to stop people pirates our game for X months after launch", which makes sense (the piracy party).
So, I'm wondering, if they actually begin releasing physical disks (offline, re-sellable, usable in 20 years), say, 6-12 months after releasing the game.. would that work? I mean, for me, assuming it's the equal block-buster to the franchise I adore (in a varying sense), then I might not mind too much to pick up a copy after 6-12 months (I don't care about bleeding edge).. but... would this work? If we assume the first 12M of buyers can't resell, would the people who buy the game after 12M actually bring a great number to the second hand market.. perhaps not?
I really have the idea of having games that I love in physical form that I know it can't be taken away.. similar to reading a book that you end up reading and know you want to come back to anytime in the future.. and this would _suck_ if I couldn't get a copy (and I assume all PC versions would be full of online-only DRM stuff anyway).
The highest capacity blurays available are 128GB and there's a good chance the game is larger than that, so it'd need to be a multi-disc installer.
I used to think physical media was great, but optical discs do have a finite shelf life. DRM-free is the important part, so you can make your own backups (like you're doing with your 360).
Physical media doesn't work when modern games are 100GB or more.
And to answer your question, most consumers don't care. The convenience of being able to buy with a few clicks and download immediately without going to a store or waiting for the mail is far more beneficial to most people than being able to locally archive or replay in 20 years.
PS5 and XBox support Blu-ray discs with capacities up to 100 GB. Both GTA V and GTA IV used multiple discs (there was an installation disc and a play disc). Heck the PC version of GTA V required 7 DVDs:
The bigger difficulty comes from the increasing complexity of games (feature wise) and their release state.
It's effectively impossible to release a "gold version" game to the quality standards of ~1990 physical media, in 2026.
The surface area for potential gameplay bugs is too large: it'd take another decade of QA polish.
So even if you have physical media for the release day version of a game, what can you do with that? Play a buggy version?
To GP's point about post-release physical editions, it makes more sense to sell something later that rolls up the most critical post-release patches and content.
This doesn't track with actual game releases, on the contrary it tends to be smaller/simpler games that release exclusively digitally and the big triple A games continue to release physical discs.
As far as bugs go, the solution for this has been and continues to be that after you install the game from the disc, you download a patch to update it. It's been this way for almost 20 years now (XBox 360 and PS3 both launched with explicit support for this).
> big triple A games continue to release physical discs.
Technically correct, but not really correct. It's hard to think of a game in the last decade where I've inserted a physical disk an been able to play without having to download a giant update first. Sometimes literally impossible - the installer disk isn't a complete game until you download an update
If the game they release on a physical disk is unplayably buggy, do they owe you a refund? Even if online updates make it perfect? They can't require that you play it online unless its not even available physically.
> Physical media doesn't work when modern games are 100GB or more.
This is a totally fair point and literally something I haven't even considered.
> most consumers don't care
I know.. I know.. I mostly commented because the linked article _does_ speak about it and that it implied people weren't happy (mostly for re-sell not for archival purposes). But, yes, I get that
I guess my point is.. if they were really to wait for X months and then start to release physical media (again, I can't see the financial incentive for them to do it), but it would really put a big split between: 1) people that buy that the game and simply want to re-sell it and 2) people that want to buy the game to "last forever" (like myself).
Because most of the people in 1) are _likely_ to be the people wanting to buy at launch, play it and move on, the second are _probably_ more willing to wait (or even (probably) wait and buy a second copy later).
Over a decade of development and an estimated budget between $1-2 Billion, I am okay with paying ten bucks more. There are significantly lesser games selling for full retail.
>Over a decade of development and an estimated budget between $1-2 Billion, I am okay with paying ten bucks more.
I don't balance my checkbook based on what other people spend, and presuming that those things have anything to do with perceived quality is a fools' errand with the multitude of counter examples one can bring up of AAA flops.
>lesser games
this thing isn't even out yet.
how many examples of over-produced and under-delivered expensive garbage in film, media, video games & art do we need to produce until people disconnect the two concepts of quality and cost ?
Depends on your gaming tastes. I haven't really enjoyed any of the GTAs for longer than 2 hours, while RDR2 I also stopped playing after about 3 hours out of boredom - and similar to the GTA series, general frustrations involving the controls. Rockstar just doesn't fit my tastes, which is certainly a problem that rests with me
That's a lot of green, and your or my opinion on any particular game isn't relevant to the assertion that Rockstar has a stellar track record in making games people seem to love.
Something being popular doesn't exclude it from not being to someones tastes. Fifa is popular but I don't think you would argue that means it's to everyone's taste.
RDR2 is very much a movie game so ofc it's popular when at this point most new "gamer" love playing cutscenes.
No, they missed. RDR2 was a significant step backwards from the first game. It just... wasn't fun. Rockstar forgot that they are making a game, not some interactive movie or a simulation.
You are the outlier of outliers by holding this opinion. You're certainly entitled to it, but RDR2 has numerous accolades and there is multitude of reasons why it was so widely praised.
Trying to act like Rockstar missed here is like sticking your head in the sand. It doesn't matter that you didn't like it, they accomplished every goal the game had.
I don’t like Taylor Swift music. My not liking it has no bearing on her obvious talent in the industry. I get people not liking GTA. Ignoring their obvious talent is silly.
It will probably be an unoptimized hot mess for the first year. Same as the rest of the over hyped AAA titles. I'm sure devs are on a death match to hit the deadline.
Another way to consider it is to think of it in terms of entertainment value. The average movie runtime in the US is 114 minutes or 1.9 hours, and the average movie ticket is $11.50. This means I'm paying on average ~$6.05/hr to see a movie. Taking the cost of GTA at $80, then you would only need to play for ~13.2 hours to break even compared to watching movies in the theater. But if I played 100 hours, then I paid $0.80/hr to play the game.
It's very weird to consider "time consumed" as a positive not negative metric.
A good piece of art changes your consciousness and makes you a different person. The best part of a book for me is not in the reading but how it becomes a part of my own imaginative engine and a new lens with which I can view the world.
I play games too... but I'm aware they are cynical time-vampires that pad out their content with repetitive grinding to jump virtual hurdles hijacking my reward centre with one-arm-bandit psychosis to make draining my life away by a rng feel "entertaining".
A game that I get bored of in 20 hours versus a game I sink 200 hours into have provided different levels of entertainment value.
Even for books, a book that one enjoys reading so much that they return to multiple times is providing more entertainment value than one read once and given away.
I don't know, I bought RDR2 and wasted hours of progress for a launcher bug that is corrupting savegames that Rockstar very well knows about and decided to never fix. Because once you already spent for the game, who cares about the user experience after sale, right?
I've been seeing a lot of drama around price increases in games, but I just don't find it to be that bad. I mean, 25 years ago a new game cost $50, and now that huge open worlds are common and the playtime can be in the hundreds of hours, and adjusting for inflation, I don't think $80 is a huge ask.
At the same time though they have a much larger customer base to sell to. Most things get cheaper with higher sales volume. If course that is probably part of the reason why the price of games stayed similiar for so long. But it is still a good thing to keep in mind, especially with such a well known studio.
Some games (lots of ROM chips) cost even more in the cart era. I paid $70 for NBA Jam on SNES in 1994, which is about $160 in inflation-adjusted 2026 dollars.
>now that huge open worlds are common and the playtime can be in the hundreds of hours
You mean those huge worlds that are mostly empty and filled with copy paste content? I take a hand crafted linear experience over open world any day. Best example is Dark Souls 1 and Elden Ring.
They say it's $100 for the ultimate edition but really, due to how much stuff they're locking into only that edition (certain shops and stores in game), that's the base edition and the $80 one is the lite edition. It is simply a marketing trick to have a 100 dollar price tag without as much pushback.
It will be very interesting to see if this lives up to the hype and/or if it is able to recoup the enormous amount of money spent developing it. The expectations from everyone seem to be so high; it's a very long way to the bottom if it somehow flops.
Personally, things got a little too realistic for me around the time of GTA IV. The earlier games felt like cartoony fun but I started to feel bad about the stuff I was doing in IV. I tried V a year or two back (I think they've maybe remastered it since?) but it ran so terribly on the Steam Deck that I refunded it.
This feels expensive, but I remember SNES games costing $60 in the 90s. If anything, the cost of videogames has been pretty resistant to inflation, I'd say?
For GTA 6, I think $80 is acceptable. I just spent almost $100 in DCS mainly for the F-14B(U)(though that comparison is not really fair, since DCS is much more niche and naturally needs a higher price to make up for lower sales)
I also don’t think the extra $20 will hurt GTA’s sales much. What I’m more worried about is whether other 3A games will use Rockstar’s price increase as an excuse to raise their own prices . And I’m even more worried that GTA may come out with a pile of DEI slop, which would really feel like another Atari crash.
You're telling me, you're building a product for adults who spend $1,500 or more on a PC, and you're selling your software that took a Burj Khalifa amount of effort to develop to these people for 5% of the cost of the machine they're going to run it off of?
It should probably cost closer to $180 bucks instead of $80.
That does not take into account how much cheaper it is now with hand holding engines and assets shops. Not to mention games have more than 10 times the customer base now so the price should still go down.
That was definitely worth the money. Can be used with the older games and did a few fun things with other games, plus you could build the Sega Tower of Power.
Long time GTA fan and I have to agree. There’s an unbelievable amount riding on this one, and I feel like the GTA satirical magic is somewhat lost. From what I heard, a lot of the original team from R* have left - but let’s see! Real info is scarce.
It's being released on November 19th, you need a box so it can go on a shelf in walmart so your relative can buy it, wrap it up and put it under the christmas tree.
No disks large enough probably (100 gig for PS5). And still if they manage to squeeze some form of the game on it, a large day one patch would render it obsolete.
A nice box with artwork like a map and other goodies is still great. I always found those maps useful and aesthetically pleasing.
Having a playable version of a game physically is great and I’d buy a version with some physical storage medium if it ever hits the shelves. Maybe the game needs more time for that. Or a different data carrier.
Edit: added PS5 disk size and preference of a physical game
Also so that it can make the retailer money. The studio might not want to piss off the retailer, which they would do by pulling the physical copy (or selling it at the OEM price directly). There are cases where retailers will de-list some products in retaliation.
What's interesting to me is that game studios have less to loose here than other OEMs. With equipment like shoes, outdoor gear, or cars, having the physical product out in stores does a lot to sell it: you have to try on shoes, driving a car builds attachment, it's also nice to check the build quality of your tent or whatever.
With games, you generally just have to play it / read the reviews, and you can trial it directly at home in a lot of cases.
If it didn't have a utility in taking the shelf space they wouldn't bother making them as it'd be a net loss. If it's not a net loss, people must be finding value such products being there as that's where they are choosing to buy them. That could be anything from gifting to collecting to lack of awareness otherwise, but it doesn't really matter what - there's no inherently shit reason for a product to be on the shelf other than if it actually doesn't have demand in that form.
It is seen constantly with a wide variety of products: the presence and visibility make the sale. You even have boxes that are much larger so that they get more visibility on shelves.
I think it's just that some people really like having a physical object to put in their bookshelf or whatever. I don't personally see the point, but I also don't need any more clutter in my house.
Physical store space, promotional contracts with vendors, special editions, bundles, etc.
I find it very silly, utterly unnecessary, but it is far from unprecedented [0] for this industry. I think it's very problematic for preservation and will only lead to more interest from groups trying to bypass their DRM because of this.
Selling empty useless packaging should be illegal. If they want to use physical chain they should come up with a physical product that has some utility.
For techy guys, we know it's all a KVM away to have it "PC native", that's what I will do personally, I'll buy the console likely just for this and just stream to have it as a regular Linux app.
I think this is a reasonable compromise. Let's face it - they could have made this a $100 game (or even more) and many people would have bought it. I would have bought it. I'm not sure if it needs to go to Neo-Geo game costs ($200+?) but Rockstar has earned enough of my trust to buy in.
That said, I think I've bought GTA5 two or three times for various platforms over the years. I doubt we'll see GTA6 on sale for years.
As they say in the automotive industry, buy once, cry once. (Pay more for the known good thing, rather than buying the cheap third party things... I'm looking at you, $30 clockspringexperts.com that I have replaced 3 times in the past 4 years... instead of buying the $300 toyota part once)
Yup, the industry has been salivating at the thought of ending second hand sales and free game/disc borrowing. Yes, there can be some steel-man justifications for not providing discs, but it rings hollow.
I personally don't really understand the uproar here. Console games have been $80 for a while now. Most of them don't even let you play on release if you dare to just buy the "pleb-Edition" and want you to pay $120 to be allowed to play on release.
Do i like the premium paywall stuff large publishers are doing? No. But this one is comparatively minor.
Sometimes a game comes out that i would really love to play and then i check the store page and feel like if i just buy the game for $80, i'm automatically being shafted by missing out on so many things. It's weird, but it makes me not want to buy these things sometimes. It does seem to work, since all my friends usually go for the $120+ variant.
It's so interesting to me that as a PC gamer, they chose to just .. not let me buy the game. It's not even an option, for any price. I'd have to wait multiple years for them to decide to go for another cash grab and do a PC release. No thanks, I just won't play.
I've never understood this. For most games by the time they release on PC the hype has died down and they get a tiny fraction of the sales they would have gotten with a simultaneous release.
Rockstar was very open as to why: PC players are a fraction of a fraction of their income. Xbox One players (yes, the previous gen) give them more money than PC players for GTA Online.
But isn't that also a result of them always releasing their games much later than on console? PC gaming has been on the rise.
The PC release was two years after consoles. Anyone who really wanted to play the game already had their opportunity.
Yep - I am a heavy pc gamer but I much prefer GTA on my PlayStation
What's the difference? I always play on pc with my Xbox controller and it's the same as on a console.
I could imagine PC gamers are less interested in online and the whole shark card thing though. IMO that's really damaged the GTA experience.
I think the difference is phycological. I am way more relaxed infront of a TV. It is like a different mood.
Ah but you can do that too with moonlight :)
Though I rarely game on the TV, for me it's uncomfortable.
You can also connect a general purpose computer to that TV?
Unlike consoles, general purpose computers are designed to be operated with a keyboard and mouse, not a controller. Yes, you can use steam in big picture mode, but you still have to launch it.
I did that for a long time. It works, but it's very difficult to match the ease of using a console:
- Steam's Big Picture mode works, but there are lots of sharp edges (launcher support being the biggest).
- PC versions of games frequently have no way to switch to a couch-friendly UI (loading menus designed for PCs)
- The power management and hardware setup is not at all streamlined
- Controller management can be painful
- Streaming apps mostly need to work in a browser, which won't have controller support.
Hmm ... yeah I guess I would feel the same with an always hooked up PC connected to the TV with some sort of nice splash screen.
I was too fixated on a classical gaming PC with mouse and keyboard.
Didn’t Valve spend a lot of time and money to get the Steam Machine to turn on by using the controller? They had to do some magic with HDMI CEC.
Was that the important psychological factor the person mentioned?
Can’t think of anything else that would make connecting a console to a TV vs connecting a PC different
Gladly you don't need to make anything else up, you can just refer to the experience of the person at the beginning of this conversation
Sure, but isn't that my point? PC players are a fraction of their income because by the time it gets to PC nobody cares.
But this was the case since forever. Albeit I didn't play it on a PC till 2016 and kept playing GTA San Andreas till I knew Los Santos like the back of my hand.
I don’t think Rockstar has ever launched on PC day one
They did with GTA 1 and 2 :)
This has been the case with every Rockstar game since GTA 3, and it works for them. It sells a ton on consoles, piracy is severely limited, still sells wildly on PC, and lets them "double dip" on sales because some people will buy it twice.
Is it the same for PlayStation? I saw news that they are going to sell the CD jackets but not a CD, they ll just put a code in it.
Not sure why they're doing that farce even. Just let people buy the code online. Who wants a plastic packet for this much cost?
Game box collectors, people who want to offer a physical wrapped gift, kids who see it while shopping and nag their parents each time they pass near the boxes... on that last part it's pretty cheap advertising in every shopping center.
But mostly the goal is to remove the resale/rent/borrow ability of people who purchase this game unfortunately.
I remember when Xbox One launched, Xbox had this great idea. If you have a physical game, you can turn it into a digital one and then the physical disc is worthless.
The bad PR was insane. They backtracked. But now I wish I had this. I use the Xbox Series S for travel and it doesn’t have a physical drive so I can’t play my physical discs.
It’s even worse because you can find used games on eBay for <$5 but those same games to buy digitally are >$20.
[dead]
Excuse my silly question, but what's the point of pre-buying a game, if it will only exists as a downloadable copy. I get you want to gift it for xmas, but for the rest of players? The point of pre-sale is to make sure you will get one when it comes out?
I personally agree that pre-buying is silly in today's world of digital distribution. But I will point out that most pre-sales now come with a digital item or two or five that's exclusive to pre-orders. Additionally, if you pre-order, you can sometimes download the game a day or so ahead of time, and then have it "unlock" when it's released, allowing you to play at minute 1. I'd wager GTA VI is well over 100 GBs, so this is actually a reasonable benefit, especially considering the potential for CDN crashes at launch time.
That's right. I forgot about the ability to pre-download the game before the official release, which might help the servers. That also remove the joke "Patch day 1 (of the size of the game)" which I always found ridiculous but became a standard practice.
Having the game of that size is the only excuse I accept for not releasing a physical version, but because no blu-ray will handle it, it starts darker days for game preservation. I love the fact that I will be able to undust my old PS4 in a couple of years and play GTA V without relying on the PlayStation Store. But we knew these days were counted.
One reason for doing it is that download servers will be absolutely slammed on release. A pre-order will often times come with the bulk of the download happening a few days in advance, and then a very small download at release that contains a small amount of data that makes the game playable. This is an argument for buying a week out, not 5 months out though.
Another is that there are very often below-RRP deals for games in advance, but if you buy it on launch day you'll be paying RRP.
In addition to what the sibling comment wrote, many platforms will let you download the game in advance, and "unlock" immediately at launch. Some people want to be among the first to play, I guess.
There was a time when pre-sales came with a special box that included a physical map or a mouse pad or some other bit of game merch. I don't think that's true anymore, though.
Though I think there have been some games that let you start playing two or three days earlier.
Now they come with exclusive digital items
There is speculation that the size on disk will be over 200Gb, so one advantage is preloading that.
Is this after aggressive optimization? Size inflation for AAA games has truly reached new heights. If it had to be released via physical media that would require 3-4 BD discs at minimum.
I've been on a retro gaming binge lately because I strongly believe the constraints & limitations of older platforms yielded a better product imo.
It is just speculation at this point, no official numbers yet. Some leaks have suggested a size about that, and it seems to be in-part corroborated by the physical editions being download codes.
Generally it doesn't make sense, but in this particular case the servers are going ti be so overloaded with people trying to download it that it might be worth it to preloaded the game. Now of course they're probably going to have separate author servers that will probably also be overloaded with everyone trying to login at once (why does a single player game need you to log in first? good question!) so imo you're probably going to be screwed either way
Usually, they throw in some free content or dlc for pre-purchasing, entice people before potentially negative reviews.
The benefit for the player is they get a few additional in-game cosmetic unlocks, and the benefit for the publisher is they get a large wad of cash in advance and and an excuse to generate a new hype cycle surrounding the game.
It's for those people that can't wait a second after release. As if the game is any worse if you start playing it a few days later.
Some backstory - I like gaming quite a bit - but more of a personal archivalist. I have basically all games I've ever played on physical media and try to keep someway to play them offline - just jailbroke my 360 to be able to play games from HDD incase the DVD drive broke. Anyway...
I saw the no DVD and was initially devastated. I'm in two minds - I saw one post that basically said "it won't contain a DVD at launch".. if I read between the lines, though I'm not sure I see the value incentive for Rockstar, but...
If they hypothetically launched with physical boxes with digital download codes, okay... This would definitely be in the name of re-sellers (as they've stated). But this is the same as piracy, which has always been, not that "we need to stop people from pirating our games for eternity" but "we need to stop people pirates our game for X months after launch", which makes sense (the piracy party).
So, I'm wondering, if they actually begin releasing physical disks (offline, re-sellable, usable in 20 years), say, 6-12 months after releasing the game.. would that work? I mean, for me, assuming it's the equal block-buster to the franchise I adore (in a varying sense), then I might not mind too much to pick up a copy after 6-12 months (I don't care about bleeding edge).. but... would this work? If we assume the first 12M of buyers can't resell, would the people who buy the game after 12M actually bring a great number to the second hand market.. perhaps not?
I really have the idea of having games that I love in physical form that I know it can't be taken away.. similar to reading a book that you end up reading and know you want to come back to anytime in the future.. and this would _suck_ if I couldn't get a copy (and I assume all PC versions would be full of online-only DRM stuff anyway).
Ergh, I dunno
The highest capacity blurays available are 128GB and there's a good chance the game is larger than that, so it'd need to be a multi-disc installer.
I used to think physical media was great, but optical discs do have a finite shelf life. DRM-free is the important part, so you can make your own backups (like you're doing with your 360).
Physical media doesn't work when modern games are 100GB or more.
And to answer your question, most consumers don't care. The convenience of being able to buy with a few clicks and download immediately without going to a store or waiting for the mail is far more beneficial to most people than being able to locally archive or replay in 20 years.
PS5 and XBox support Blu-ray discs with capacities up to 100 GB. Both GTA V and GTA IV used multiple discs (there was an installation disc and a play disc). Heck the PC version of GTA V required 7 DVDs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/18hkrvj/you_c...
The bigger difficulty comes from the increasing complexity of games (feature wise) and their release state.
It's effectively impossible to release a "gold version" game to the quality standards of ~1990 physical media, in 2026.
The surface area for potential gameplay bugs is too large: it'd take another decade of QA polish.
So even if you have physical media for the release day version of a game, what can you do with that? Play a buggy version?
To GP's point about post-release physical editions, it makes more sense to sell something later that rolls up the most critical post-release patches and content.
This doesn't track with actual game releases, on the contrary it tends to be smaller/simpler games that release exclusively digitally and the big triple A games continue to release physical discs.
As far as bugs go, the solution for this has been and continues to be that after you install the game from the disc, you download a patch to update it. It's been this way for almost 20 years now (XBox 360 and PS3 both launched with explicit support for this).
> big triple A games continue to release physical discs.
Technically correct, but not really correct. It's hard to think of a game in the last decade where I've inserted a physical disk an been able to play without having to download a giant update first. Sometimes literally impossible - the installer disk isn't a complete game until you download an update
My post contains two sentences... for some reason you completely disregarded the second one.
For the sake of participating in a discussion, avoid doing that in the future.
If the game they release on a physical disk is unplayably buggy, do they owe you a refund? Even if online updates make it perfect? They can't require that you play it online unless its not even available physically.
> Physical media doesn't work when modern games are 100GB or more.
This is a totally fair point and literally something I haven't even considered.
> most consumers don't care
I know.. I know.. I mostly commented because the linked article _does_ speak about it and that it implied people weren't happy (mostly for re-sell not for archival purposes). But, yes, I get that
I guess my point is.. if they were really to wait for X months and then start to release physical media (again, I can't see the financial incentive for them to do it), but it would really put a big split between: 1) people that buy that the game and simply want to re-sell it and 2) people that want to buy the game to "last forever" (like myself). Because most of the people in 1) are _likely_ to be the people wanting to buy at launch, play it and move on, the second are _probably_ more willing to wait (or even (probably) wait and buy a second copy later).
Pirating should solve your problems pretty directly. That's basically what it is: restoring copyability of a piece of media.
Over a decade of development and an estimated budget between $1-2 Billion, I am okay with paying ten bucks more. There are significantly lesser games selling for full retail.
>Over a decade of development and an estimated budget between $1-2 Billion, I am okay with paying ten bucks more.
I don't balance my checkbook based on what other people spend, and presuming that those things have anything to do with perceived quality is a fools' errand with the multitude of counter examples one can bring up of AAA flops.
>lesser games
this thing isn't even out yet.
how many examples of over-produced and under-delivered expensive garbage in film, media, video games & art do we need to produce until people disconnect the two concepts of quality and cost ?
edit : I used cadre the wrong way
It is Rockstar, they haven't missed in a couple of decades and this is their flagship product.
> they haven't missed in a couple of decades
Depends on your gaming tastes. I haven't really enjoyed any of the GTAs for longer than 2 hours, while RDR2 I also stopped playing after about 3 hours out of boredom - and similar to the GTA series, general frustrations involving the controls. Rockstar just doesn't fit my tastes, which is certainly a problem that rests with me
> Depends on your gaming tastes.
It doesn't, if we're talking about consensus.
https://www.metacritic.com/company/rockstar-games/
That's a lot of green, and your or my opinion on any particular game isn't relevant to the assertion that Rockstar has a stellar track record in making games people seem to love.
Something being popular doesn't exclude it from not being to someones tastes. Fifa is popular but I don't think you would argue that means it's to everyone's taste.
RDR2 is very much a movie game so ofc it's popular when at this point most new "gamer" love playing cutscenes.
RDR2 is highly rated as one of the greatest games of all time.
Rockstar hasn’t missed, you’re an outlier.
No, they missed. RDR2 was a significant step backwards from the first game. It just... wasn't fun. Rockstar forgot that they are making a game, not some interactive movie or a simulation.
You are the outlier of outliers by holding this opinion. You're certainly entitled to it, but RDR2 has numerous accolades and there is multitude of reasons why it was so widely praised.
Trying to act like Rockstar missed here is like sticking your head in the sand. It doesn't matter that you didn't like it, they accomplished every goal the game had.
The story is good, the amount of side quest story detail is pretty crazy, the resource collection part of the gameplay is a bit of a grind.
Flipping through each page of a book to find the item you want is developer self-pleasuring.
I think it's very telling that you mentioned the actual game part last and even then not positive.
People don't like RDR2 because of its gameplay but story, immersion and feeling. Which would be great for a movie but side dish for a game.
So then they haven't missed in a couple of decades, with the understanding that not everyone enjoys the game style.
I don’t like Taylor Swift music. My not liking it has no bearing on her obvious talent in the industry. I get people not liking GTA. Ignoring their obvious talent is silly.
It's still possible they miss this time. Unlikely, but I rather wait for reviews before buying.
It will probably be an unoptimized hot mess for the first year. Same as the rest of the over hyped AAA titles. I'm sure devs are on a death match to hit the deadline.
Is it easier for you if we talk about lifetime of the game, especially online ?
Another way to consider it is to think of it in terms of entertainment value. The average movie runtime in the US is 114 minutes or 1.9 hours, and the average movie ticket is $11.50. This means I'm paying on average ~$6.05/hr to see a movie. Taking the cost of GTA at $80, then you would only need to play for ~13.2 hours to break even compared to watching movies in the theater. But if I played 100 hours, then I paid $0.80/hr to play the game.
It's very weird to consider "time consumed" as a positive not negative metric.
A good piece of art changes your consciousness and makes you a different person. The best part of a book for me is not in the reading but how it becomes a part of my own imaginative engine and a new lens with which I can view the world.
I play games too... but I'm aware they are cynical time-vampires that pad out their content with repetitive grinding to jump virtual hurdles hijacking my reward centre with one-arm-bandit psychosis to make draining my life away by a rng feel "entertaining".
A game that I get bored of in 20 hours versus a game I sink 200 hours into have provided different levels of entertainment value.
Even for books, a book that one enjoys reading so much that they return to multiple times is providing more entertainment value than one read once and given away.
If they sold 100 million copies at $60, that still be would be an excellent ROI on $1-2 billion.
Its 20 bucks more not 10.
I'm only 25 but I remember when games were $40 - $60 lol. GTA 6 is certainly worth the extra price but man I didn't realize how good we had it.
I don't know, I bought RDR2 and wasted hours of progress for a launcher bug that is corrupting savegames that Rockstar very well knows about and decided to never fix. Because once you already spent for the game, who cares about the user experience after sale, right?
For me, f- them and their shitty products.
>for a launcher bug that is corrupting savegames
Paying customers getting the worse experience is par for the course now.
I've been seeing a lot of drama around price increases in games, but I just don't find it to be that bad. I mean, 25 years ago a new game cost $50, and now that huge open worlds are common and the playtime can be in the hundreds of hours, and adjusting for inflation, I don't think $80 is a huge ask.
At the same time though they have a much larger customer base to sell to. Most things get cheaper with higher sales volume. If course that is probably part of the reason why the price of games stayed similiar for so long. But it is still a good thing to keep in mind, especially with such a well known studio.
Some games (lots of ROM chips) cost even more in the cart era. I paid $70 for NBA Jam on SNES in 1994, which is about $160 in inflation-adjusted 2026 dollars.
>now that huge open worlds are common and the playtime can be in the hundreds of hours
You mean those huge worlds that are mostly empty and filled with copy paste content? I take a hand crafted linear experience over open world any day. Best example is Dark Souls 1 and Elden Ring.
They say it's $100 for the ultimate edition but really, due to how much stuff they're locking into only that edition (certain shops and stores in game), that's the base edition and the $80 one is the lite edition. It is simply a marketing trick to have a 100 dollar price tag without as much pushback.
The price seems sensible to me, these AAA titles are expensive to create.
Not that it'll affect me personally; I'm not buying this game after Rockstar's [union busting][1]!
[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9v10rr1meeo
It will be very interesting to see if this lives up to the hype and/or if it is able to recoup the enormous amount of money spent developing it. The expectations from everyone seem to be so high; it's a very long way to the bottom if it somehow flops.
Personally, things got a little too realistic for me around the time of GTA IV. The earlier games felt like cartoony fun but I started to feel bad about the stuff I was doing in IV. I tried V a year or two back (I think they've maybe remastered it since?) but it ran so terribly on the Steam Deck that I refunded it.
If it lives up to the hype it will definitely recoup the expense.
This feels expensive, but I remember SNES games costing $60 in the 90s. If anything, the cost of videogames has been pretty resistant to inflation, I'd say?
I guess the real question is its gonna be release within 2026?
They're targeting a release date of November 19th, and pre-orders were opened today.
https://www.metaculus.com/questions/40965/ gives it 71% probability.
Interesting, that’s lower than I expected
For GTA 6, I think $80 is acceptable. I just spent almost $100 in DCS mainly for the F-14B(U)(though that comparison is not really fair, since DCS is much more niche and naturally needs a higher price to make up for lower sales)
I also don’t think the extra $20 will hurt GTA’s sales much. What I’m more worried about is whether other 3A games will use Rockstar’s price increase as an excuse to raise their own prices . And I’m even more worried that GTA may come out with a pile of DEI slop, which would really feel like another Atari crash.
I'm surprised it won't be more.
You're telling me, you're building a product for adults who spend $1,500 or more on a PC, and you're selling your software that took a Burj Khalifa amount of effort to develop to these people for 5% of the cost of the machine they're going to run it off of?
It should probably cost closer to $180 bucks instead of $80.
I can't believe GTA 5 came out 13 years ago...
GTA 5 lasted so long, it's a good buy
GTA III was $50 in 2001.
About 90$ adjusted for inflation, using this tool:
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=50&year1=20010...
I paid $50 for launch-day Atari 2600 Pac-Man at a department store in 1982.
That's $177 today.
But at least I still have a plastic rectangle 44 years later. I'd lose a download code in a matter of months.
If they are anything like textbooks: "Your access code is only good for 90 days"
That does not take into account how much cheaper it is now with hand holding engines and assets shops. Not to mention games have more than 10 times the customer base now so the price should still go down.
Yeah if it has the amount of content people are expecting I'd say it'll be well worth 80 bucks
No Man's Auto
Especially considering the price of e.g. Mario Kart World.
What a disappointment that was. The open world aspect was neat but the whole game could have been an indie production tech wise.
Which would be $94.29 in today's dollars.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 launch price was $69.99. in 1994.
That's $159.89 in today's dollars.
And that was only half the planned game until you bought Sonic & Knuckles with Lock-On Technology.
That was definitely worth the money. Can be used with the older games and did a few fun things with other games, plus you could build the Sega Tower of Power.
And this is why I roll my eyes when gamers complain about the cost of games these days - they have never been cheaper.
There's no way it lives up to the hype, right?
Long time GTA fan and I have to agree. There’s an unbelievable amount riding on this one, and I feel like the GTA satirical magic is somewhat lost. From what I heard, a lot of the original team from R* have left - but let’s see! Real info is scarce.
Time to start complaining to them about RDR3
> Rockstar said physical copies of the game will contain a code for a digital download for the game inside a box, rather than a disc.
So what's the point of that? Why waste all that money and energy shipping "physical copies" when it could just be an email
It's being released on November 19th, you need a box so it can go on a shelf in walmart so your relative can buy it, wrap it up and put it under the christmas tree.
No disks large enough probably (100 gig for PS5). And still if they manage to squeeze some form of the game on it, a large day one patch would render it obsolete.
A nice box with artwork like a map and other goodies is still great. I always found those maps useful and aesthetically pleasing.
Having a playable version of a game physically is great and I’d buy a version with some physical storage medium if it ever hits the shelves. Maybe the game needs more time for that. Or a different data carrier.
Edit: added PS5 disk size and preference of a physical game
World of Warcraft shipped with 6 DVDs or something like that. Installing it was a pain in the ass but there is something nice about that whole ritual
A PS5 disk can hold as much as 100GB, and they could use multiple disks if necessary.
So it has a presence in stores.
Also so that it can make the retailer money. The studio might not want to piss off the retailer, which they would do by pulling the physical copy (or selling it at the OEM price directly). There are cases where retailers will de-list some products in retaliation.
What's interesting to me is that game studios have less to loose here than other OEMs. With equipment like shoes, outdoor gear, or cars, having the physical product out in stores does a lot to sell it: you have to try on shoes, driving a car builds attachment, it's also nice to check the build quality of your tent or whatever.
With games, you generally just have to play it / read the reviews, and you can trial it directly at home in a lot of cases.
Sounds shit. Taking space for products that actually need space.
If it didn't have a utility in taking the shelf space they wouldn't bother making them as it'd be a net loss. If it's not a net loss, people must be finding value such products being there as that's where they are choosing to buy them. That could be anything from gifting to collecting to lack of awareness otherwise, but it doesn't really matter what - there's no inherently shit reason for a product to be on the shelf other than if it actually doesn't have demand in that form.
It is seen constantly with a wide variety of products: the presence and visibility make the sale. You even have boxes that are much larger so that they get more visibility on shelves.
You can't wrap an email as a Christmas present.
I think it's just that some people really like having a physical object to put in their bookshelf or whatever. I don't personally see the point, but I also don't need any more clutter in my house.
Awareness and for those who don't yet have a console?
Every shop selling it will be advertising it in their shop windows and on the shop floor. That's free marketing!
Also I imagine there will be bundle deals with consoles and other accessories.
Maybe the point is to trick people into thinking they're buying a version that they have the right to resell. The online version is a lesser product.
Physical store space, promotional contracts with vendors, special editions, bundles, etc.
I find it very silly, utterly unnecessary, but it is far from unprecedented [0] for this industry. I think it's very problematic for preservation and will only lead to more interest from groups trying to bypass their DRM because of this.
[0] https://www.shacknews.com/article/108552/cardboard-disc-incl...
Selling empty useless packaging should be illegal. If they want to use physical chain they should come up with a physical product that has some utility.
For techy guys, we know it's all a KVM away to have it "PC native", that's what I will do personally, I'll buy the console likely just for this and just stream to have it as a regular Linux app.
This post title misses the big point here, which is that the physical copy will not include a physical disk, only a digital download code.
This effectively eliminates buying and re-selling of the game.
I think this is a reasonable compromise. Let's face it - they could have made this a $100 game (or even more) and many people would have bought it. I would have bought it. I'm not sure if it needs to go to Neo-Geo game costs ($200+?) but Rockstar has earned enough of my trust to buy in.
That said, I think I've bought GTA5 two or three times for various platforms over the years. I doubt we'll see GTA6 on sale for years.
As they say in the automotive industry, buy once, cry once. (Pay more for the known good thing, rather than buying the cheap third party things... I'm looking at you, $30 clockspringexperts.com that I have replaced 3 times in the past 4 years... instead of buying the $300 toyota part once)
I'm so glad TTWO bust up the unions, otherwise it may have cost $81!
"physical copies will contain a code for a digital download for the game" ?!?
This is unfortunately becoming the standard. I always buy physical when possible, but I think we're coming to the end of that...
Yup, the industry has been salivating at the thought of ending second hand sales and free game/disc borrowing. Yes, there can be some steel-man justifications for not providing discs, but it rings hollow.
"Scan the following QR code..."
I personally don't really understand the uproar here. Console games have been $80 for a while now. Most of them don't even let you play on release if you dare to just buy the "pleb-Edition" and want you to pay $120 to be allowed to play on release.
Do i like the premium paywall stuff large publishers are doing? No. But this one is comparatively minor.
Sometimes a game comes out that i would really love to play and then i check the store page and feel like if i just buy the game for $80, i'm automatically being shafted by missing out on so many things. It's weird, but it makes me not want to buy these things sometimes. It does seem to work, since all my friends usually go for the $120+ variant.
I don't really care about the price. For me, the big disappointment is that it won't release on PC.
It will, but with the usual delay of 1+ year.
take my money
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I'll respond next week when I'm finished laughing.