Baldur's Gate 3 publishing director thinks GTA 6 might have the "clout" to normalise a $100 price tag

rockpapershotgun.com:

Debate continues to rage on the internetworks about whether premium video games, and especially the ones with the largest budgets, need to have higher price tags. This time, the culprit is Matthew Ball of analyst firm Epyllion, who remarks in a sprawling State Of Videogaming 2025 report that "some gamemakers hope GTA 6 will be priced at $80-$100 [in the USA], breaking the $70 barrier and helping $50 titles to move up to $60, $60 to $70, $70 to $80, etc."

Picked up by VGC, these comments have now been circulated on social media, and have attracted the extremely polarised mixture of responses you're probably expecting. Among those chipping in is Larian's director of publishing Michael Douse, who makes the familiar argument that overall prices for games like GTA aren't necessarily higher today when you factor in economic inflation, while also acknowledging that up-front price alone doesn't explain the industry's recent mass livelihood devastation, and that few people would happily pay that much for a video game - not even Our Lord In Open Worlding GTA.

Having quote-tweeted the VGC article with the caption "You're not supposed to say this out loud!!!!", Douse added that "a good company raises salaries in line with inflation so that their staff don't die or something, but games prices haven't risen with inflation.

"This isn't the reason the industry is in the shit for now, but it is an uncomfortable truth," he went on. "On the other hand, the responsibility for a game developer is to make sure that the game they show lives up to that promise, and that investment from the player."

Another user objected that while GTA 6 might get away with such a hike, that's unlikely to be true of most games. "That is indeed the problem," Douse replied, adding that digital distribution has long since done away with the checks on game availability imposed by brick-and-mortar retailers. "We are at a strange moment where retail is not defining output & content, but now nobody is," he went