It doesn’t feel like it’s possible for a game to meet the expectations set for GTA 6. With over a decade since the last GTA, and seven years since Rockstar gave us Red Dead Redemption 2, absence has made the heart grow fonder, and the world is salivating for GTA. The time and money spent on this thing are obviously factors in its fervent anticipation, but there’s also the fact GTA itself is a cultural institution.
But then you get to thinking, if it’s impossible for a game to meet expectations, why does it have those expectations in the first place? Other than the vague sense that it needs to be ‘very good’ and ‘worth the wait’, what actually are the expectations for GTA 6, and why do they matter so much? While I’m going to spend the next 700 words or so attempting to answer that question, I can spoil the ending for you now – the only person whose expectations matter at all for this is you.
No Game Has Had As High Expectations As GTA 6
The pressure on GTA 6 is mighty, and incredibly contradictory. It needs to be a game of the moment, living up to its satirical reputation at a time when real life seems stranger than fiction. But it also needs to be timeless, a game that avoids the pitfalls of referencing memes that have long since grown stale across its development period and feels as if it stands on its own feet without relying on referential humour.
It needs to subvert our preconceptions and deliver a gameplay experience that feels like nothing else we’ve ever tried before, showing exactly why it warrants such a long development cycle, massive budget, and potentially steep rise in price for already-expensive triple-A games. But it also needs to be exactly what we think of GTA to be if it wants to retain its massive casual playerbase. It needs to modernise, but also to be a classic.
It also needs to show that it was worth its massive budget, but then… what was that budget? In typical Rockstar fashion, we don’t have the official budget for GTA 6, just as we don’t for GTA 5 or Red Dead Redemption 2, the two games that would be in a comparable ballpark. Analysts suggest the latter two were around $200 million (the going rate for a game that size – Cyberpunk 2077’s was confirmed to be $216 million at launch), while a leak points to GTA 6’s being $2 billion.
If we take that staggeringly high number of ten times more than it cost to make than the last two games as correct – which is a major leap of faith itself – that’s probably more of a lifetime budget expectation with online updates and maintenance. Genshin Impact, a game that is significantly less mechanically complex or graphically advanced, has thus far operated under a budget of around $1 billion. It’s not too far-fetched to imagine GTA 6 costing double that over its lifetime if GTA Online is to jump ship with it and grow further. At the same time, if that is the case, you’re not going to see $2 billion worth of video game there from day one, either.
How Good GTA 6 Will Be Is All Relative
This is where context comes into it. There were people who, when Cyberpunk 2077 launched in a state that was broken on console and still pretty hollow and missing a lot of planned or promised features on PC, considered it to be the new peak of video games. Some of this may have been because they were taken in by the hype or were seeing what they wanted to see, but it’s also because (when it worked, as it did on high end PCs) it looked fantastic and playing it was pretty fun, even if you couldn’t go into the buildings or make many choices or drive or or or or.
At the same time, there were people who, when Cyberpunk 2077 was completely fixed and Idris Elba shot us in the face to tell us so, still felt it was way short of the immersive world it had promised and was convincingly doing an impression of a top tier triple-A video game rather than being one. Both these types of people, plus the ones in the middle who didn’t like Cyberpunk 2077 when it was broken but did like it when it was fixed, will play GTA 6, and they will all have their own opinions on it.
GTA 6 doesn’t just carry the unique pressures of stature, budget, and reputation, but the standard pressures of being a major video game that everybody will discuss in superlatives for its first few weeks of life. It will be the best video game ever and the worst GTA yet, simultaneously. Some people will be lying or exaggerating when they say this, and others will be telling the truth. It is impossible to fully quantify what GTA 6’s expectations are, and therefore impossible to say if it can live up to them. In the end, all that matters is what you want from GTA 6. And the only person who can decide if you get it is you.
- Released
-
2025
- Platform(s)
-
PS5, Xbox Series X|S