The most anticipated video game of the year, “Grand Theft Auto VI”, is now available for pre-sale in most countries around the world, without the dreaded price explosion, but the absence of a disc in the box, prohibitive for the second-hand market, is the subject of debate.
Presales opened Thursday at midnight in each country, zone by zone: online stores now display the game from New Zealand to Europe via Japan. Only the Americas are still missing.
Thirteen years after “GTA V”, the new opus of the gangster saga from American publisher Rockstar Games promises to be the “biggest launch ever in the field of entertainment”, surpassing “any film, television series, concert or album sales”, estimates Piers Harding-Rolls, expert at the British firm Ampere Analysis.
Some 45 million copies could be sold upon its launch, scheduled for November 19, according to the Piper Sandler bank.
The fruit of numerous speculations for months, Rockstar Games and its parent company Take-Two Interactive finally revealed the price in the United States on Wednesday: $79.99 (around 70 euros), ten dollars more than the average price of big-budget games, but far from the $100 announced by the rumor.
In Europe, the game is offered at 80 euros (70 pounds in the United Kingdom), the standard price for this type of production, with a major French distributor even displaying it online at 60 euros. In Japan, the Playstation store offered it on Thursday for 9,300 yen ($76).
An “Ultimate” edition, containing bonuses such as new vehicles and weapons, is offered, announced at 99.99 dollars (88 euros) in the United States.
The price, higher than the average in the homeland of its studio, is partly explained by the production cost, estimated between one and two billion dollars, and its development period, more than six years long, which had pushed some observers to anticipate a price of up to 100 dollars.
But “given its colossal scale and the enthusiasm it arouses, if there is one game that can be sold at 80 dollars without arousing strong opposition from players, it is Grand Theft Auto VI+”, notes Andrew Marok, from the Raymond James firm.
– No disk –
This new episode of GTA, which features a duo of “Bonnie and Clyde”-style protagonists in a universe inspired by Florida, comes to the end of 13 years of waiting for players.
They were eager to discover the successor to “GTA V”, released in 2013 and become the second best-selling game in history with nearly 230 million copies sold, behind only “Minecraft”. It is still the fastest entertainment product to cross the billion dollars mark: in three days (the first film in the ranking, Avatar, took 17).
“We sometimes had the impression that +GTA VI+ was only a distant concept, and to think that I will soon be able to play is almost a miracle,” Red Young, a 26-year-old Scot, host of the GTABase fansite, told AFP.
Especially since the title has experienced several postponements: scheduled for fall 2025, the marketing of “GTA VI” was postponed to the end of May, then to November.
Another detail caused the astonishment, even anger, of some players: Rockstar specified on Wednesday that the game box will contain a download code, which implies the absence of a disk containing the game data.
“So this means that you will never see a second-hand +GTA VI+. Never. It’s unprecedented for such a game”, reacted on X the content creator Conkerax, specializing in video games. “What a disappointment”.
Two independent North American retailers, Video Games Plus and Loot Box Gaming, announced on X that they would not sell the game until a physical copy containing the disc was available.
For Daniel Ahmad, from Niko Partners, “the absence of a disc is not surprising”, because “digital sales of complete games now represent around 80% of sales on PlayStation and 90% on Xbox”.
Since its beginnings, the series has seduced players with its reconstructions of fictional cities inspired by American megacities and the great freedom of action offered to players in a very detailed open world.
Regularly featuring the story of gangsters or thugs, the missions involve multiple offenses, from burglary to murder: an aspect which has been the subject of numerous criticisms, with some being alarmed by its influence on younger players.
Published on June 25 at 01:31, AFP
