Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-orders go live on June 25, and weirdly, one of the biggest questions still hanging over the biggest game in the world is also one of the simplest: how much is the damn thing actually going to cost?

Rockstar has confirmed the pre-order date. It has shown the cover art. It has told everyone to wishlist the game on PlayStation and Xbox. But unless I’ve missed it, there is still no official price. That is interesting because GTA 6 has become the game everyone points at when talking about the future of video game pricing. If any game could push the standard price beyond $70, surely it is Grand Theft Auto 6.

But the funny thing is that GTA 6 is also one of the only games that could do the exact opposite.

Before anyone starts sharpening their comment-section knives, no, I am not saying GTA 6 will cost $50. I am not saying it will cost $100. I am not saying Rockstar is secretly planning to save the industry, ruin the industry, or personally mail every player a crisp ten-dollar note and an apology for GTA Online loading times.

This is just a thought experiment, because GTA 6 is one of the few games where the thought experiment actually works.

Grand Theft Auto plays by its own rules. It is that big, that much of a behemoth in this industry, that it can do almost whatever it wants within reason. Obviously, there are limits. If Rockstar and Take-Two announced that every copy of GTA 6 would cost $200 and require a signed blood oath, there would probably be a problem. Although, let’s be honest, a depressing number of people would sign the contract, hand over the cash, and be causing chaos in Vice City by midnight.

But within the normal-ish world of video game pricing, GTA is different. There is no other GTA. There is no other game that carries quite the same cultural weight, the same mass-market appeal, the same ability to make people who have not touched a controller in years suddenly start asking whether they need a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X.

Most games have to find their place in the market. GTA is the market event. It does not launch so much as arrive, block out the sun, and make every other publisher quietly move its release date.

For god’s sake, this is a game so bloody enormous that the cover art reveal got its own trailer. A trailer for the box. That sounds like parody, but it is real, and Rockstar’s official cover art reveal video has already pulled more than 9 million views on YouTube.

That is the level GTA operates on. Other games are out here desperately trying to convince people to watch ten minutes of gameplay. GTA can show everyone the rectangle it will eventually be printed on and still dominate the conversation.

That is why the price question is fascinating. GTA 6 could probably charge more than the standard $70 and still sell tens of millions of copies. Maybe not as many as it would at a lower price, obviously, but enough to make more money than most publishers see in their wildest shareholder dreams. If any game can convince people to swallow $80, $90, or even the dreaded $100, it is this one.

And yet, GTA 6 is also one of the few games where charging less could make a bizarre amount of sense.

Most games have to be priced carefully because their audience is limited. Sell 100,000 copies at $20 and you make one amount of money. Sell 50,000 copies at $30 and you make another. Drop too low and you leave money on the table. Go too high and you scare people away. Pricing is a dark art, mostly performed by exhausted people staring at spreadsheets while muttering about conversion rates. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong.

GTA 6 does not have a normal audience. It has a tidal wave wearing sunglasses. Its audience is… everyone?

Yes, the game’s budget is almost certainly obscene. I’ll be fucking baffled if it is not the most expensive video game ever made once you factor in development, marketing, support, online infrastructure, and however much money Rockstar spent making sure every puddle in Vice City reflects sadness correctly. Modern AAA budgets are already terrifying. GTA 6 is probably sitting somewhere above them, sipping a cocktail. In fact, I would not bat an eye if it were over $1 billion and counting. That is not a lot of money when Take-Two is expecting $8 billion+ in FY2027 net bookings.

This is Grand Theft Auto. GTA 5 is nearing 230 million copies sold in lifetime sales. The wider series has sold hundreds of millions of copies. GTA Online has been a money-printing machine for more than a decade. Whatever GTA 6 costs to make, it is not exactly limping into the market, hoping Dave from Huddersfield remembers to pre-order the deluxe edition.

That is what makes the cheaper-price scenario so funny. Just imagine, for a second, that you are another major publisher on GTA 6 pre-order day.

You are sitting in a meeting room. The air smells faintly of burnt coffee, expensive chairs, and terror. Your company has spent six years and $400 million making a AAA game. You have survived delays, reboots, focus tests, engine problems, market shifts, executives discovering the word “AI,” and at least three meetings where someone used the phrase “player engagement ecosystem” without being immediately fired out of a cannon.

Next week, you are supposed to announce that your game costs $70. Pre-orders will go live. Trailers will be uploaded. There might even be balloons. Somebody mentioned a cake.

Then the memo comes in.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is available to pre-order for $60.

Ten dollars less than the industry standard.

The room goes silent. Somewhere, a finance director drops a spreadsheet. A marketing executive starts quietly chewing through a pen. Someone from production begins staring into the middle distance, remembering all the weekends they will never get back. The volcano full of sacrificed programmers suddenly feels like a poor investment. That contract you signed that sold your firstborn’s soul to the Devil? Doesn’t look financially clever now.

Because how do you explain that? How do you walk out and tell people your game costs more than Grand Theft Auto 6? Not some tiny indie passion project. Not a remaster. Not a weird little experimental thing made by twelve people, a dog, and a dream. Grand Theft Auto bloody 6. The game that has been absorbing hype, money, and human attention like a luxury black hole for over a decade. You can’t compete with that. It doesn’t even matter if logically everyone understands that nobody could reasonably compete with that.

That is the hilarious, terrifying power Rockstar has here. GTA 6 could charge more and probably get away with it. But it could also charge less and make everyone else in the industry look like they have turned up to a knife fight with a PowerPoint presentation, and still make an obscene amount of money.

We saw a smaller, weirder version of this conversation recently with Hollow Knight: Silksong. When Team Cherry put that game out at a lower price than many people expected, some developers and commentators were not exactly thrilled, because Silksong is not a normal indie game. It already had a massive audience waiting for it. Team Cherry could afford to price it aggressively because the sheer number of people interested in buying it changed the maths. But by doing that, other publishers and developers felt it made them look bad because they were asking the same or more for their own games, which maybe did not look as good, or did not have as much content.

GTA 6 would be that scenario, except on nuclear-powered steroids.

If Rockstar launched GTA 6 at $50 or $60, it would not necessarily be charity. It would be dominance. A giant neon sign saying: “We can afford to do this. You can’t.”

And to be clear, I do not think Rockstar will do that. My boring, sensible guess is that GTA 6 lands at the standard $70, with several more expensive editions stacked on top because this is still the games industry and nobody leaves money on the table unless the table is on fire. And even then.

I also do not think Rockstar needs to be the company that normalises $100 games. Why take that PR hit? Why become the big evil face of rising game prices when you can charge the expected amount, sell an ungodly number of copies, and then make more money through whatever GTA Online becomes next? Rockstar and Take-Two can afford to sit above the carnage while someone else takes the punch. Unless the creeping shadow of greed manages to worm its way into Take-Two’s head, of course. And in this world, that is always on the table.

But that is what makes the whole debate interesting. GTA 6 could be the game that proves $100 releases are viable. It could also be the game that proves the biggest title on the planet does not need to charge more because scale is its own superpower.

And if another publisher tries to follow with a $100 game of its own? Good luck. Because the obvious response from a lot of players will be simple: you are not Grand Theft Auto.

That is the problem. Ubisoft cannot just slap $100 on the next Assassin’s Creed and expect everyone to salute. Xbox cannot do it with Gears. EA cannot do it with any random thing it drags out of the live-service mines. Most publishers are still trying to convince people their games are worth $70. GTA 6 is one of the few games that gets to ask whether $70 is even the most interesting number.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is not competing with other games in the normal sense. It is competing with itself, with impossible expectations, and with more than a decade of hype. Whether anything can actually live up to that is another question entirely, and possibly one best answered with strong drink and a locked comments section.

But on pricing, Rockstar is in a position almost nobody else gets to occupy. It could charge more. It could charge less. It could sit exactly where everyone expects and still make enough money to make accountants emotional.

Most publishers are trying to work out what players will tolerate. GTA 6 is one of the very few games that gets to ask a different question: what would be funniest? What if we just decided to set the entire industry on fire?

To quote the great Alfred, butler to Batman: some men just want to watch the world burn. Rockstar might be one of the few companies rich enough to buy the matches.