•Rockstar Giochi has pushed back against an online rumor that bağlantı”>GTA 6 cost more than $1.5 billion to develop, insisting the figure was wrong even as it acknowledges the game is likely the most expensive video game ever made.
In a detailed report by bağlantı”>Bloomberg on the making of GTA 6, Rockstar’s head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe said the claim that the game’s budget exceeded the $1.5 billion spent building Dubai’s Burj Khalifa was inaccurate, though she did not confirm the title’s exact cost. The rumor appears to have originated in a July 2025 article by bağlantı”>Gulf Notizie, which stated that while “Dubai’s landmark is said to have cost $1.5 billion,” the game was “thought to have a $2 billion budget.”
Earlier this year, bağlantı”>Business Insider suggested a budget of $1-1.5 billion based on industry analyst estimates during an interview with Strauss Zelnick, chief executive of Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two. Zelnick declined to say how much the company had spent on GTA 6 so far but admitted “it was expensive.”
According to Kolbe, GTA 6 did not cost more than $1.5 billion to develop, yet it is still regarded as the most expensive video game ever made. The only title that might come close is space sim bağlantı”>Star Citizen, though its now over-$1 billion budget comes from ongoing sales of in-game spaceships.
Other high-budget productions provide context: Bungie’s recently released extraction shooter reportedly had a budget exceeding $250 million, while Concord’s initial development deal was around $200 million according to bağlantı”>Kotaku. In 2023, documents submitted as part of the Xbox Federal Trade Commission case bağlantı”>accidentally revealed that The Last of Us: Part II and Horizon Forbidden West each cost more than $200 million to develop. Last year, bağlantı”>the astronomical development budgets of the Call of Duty games were revealed for the first time after a court document confirmed Activision invested $700 million into bağlantı”>Black Ops Cold War alone—though that figure spanned the shooter’s entire life cycle. GTA 6, clearly, surpasses them all.
Bloomberg also reported that Rockstar now employs 4,711 staff across 12 offices, up from 2,441 when Red Dead Redemption 2 launched in 2018. The company has doubled in size over the past eight years, a growth that will have significantly increased costs.
Bloomberg noted that GTA 6’s enormous budget is likely to pay off quickly, with some predicting around 40 million sales and $3 billion in revenue within the first four months of the game going on sale in November. The standard edition costs $80—a $10 increase over the typical price for a triple-A title—while the Ultimate Edition, which some consider an essential purchase, costs $100.
The report also points to an expected launch of online multigiocatore next year, possibly tied to the PC version’s release, bağlantı”>which is reportedly due out in Q1 2027, a move that will surely boost revenue further. In short, even if the budget falls just shy of $1.5 billion, GTA 6’s cost doesn’t feel like much of a risk.
In July, Newzoo analysis suggested bağlantı”>GTA 6 generated approximately $180 million in digital preorders across the U.S. and the five biggest European markets during the last week of June, when preorders went live at midnight on June 25. The analytics firm used GTA 5’s player distribution—around 69% of GTA 5’s lifetime console players sit within those six markets—to estimate global first-week preorder spending for GTA 6 at approximately $260 million. Based on comparable preorder curves, Newzoo said GTA 6 is currently tracking toward $3.25 billion to $5.2 billion in cumulative sales by the end of launch week.
GTA 5 set records by generating $1 billion in three days after going on sale in 2013, making it the fastest-selling entertainment product in history—Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame ran it close with $1 billion at the global box office in five days. GTA 6 seems certain to hit the $1 billion mark faster than both. GTA 5 went on to become the second best-selling video game of all time, with nearly 230 million units sold-in to date; only Minecraft is ahead of it.
In other GTA 6 news, Bloomberg reported that bağlantı”>Rockstar has promised its next game won’t take another eight years to develop, though details about what that title will be were not provided.
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