by Alex Monch & Matthew Desouza • September 17, 2026
Have you ever thought about why video-games cost so much money? In the past, there used to be a friendlier budget. Now, up and coming games such as Grand Theft Auto VI, FC 27, and Call of Duty MW4 cost a lot of money, spanning from the $70-$100 range. These prices for games make many players second guess purchasing the game. In this article, we will analyze and explain why these games cost so much money.
Games cost a lot of money to develop. A prime example is GTA 6, which is costing about 1-2 billion dollars. All of this money spent on the game obviously prompts the development team to make their money back, plus profit. Because games like these are costing billions of dollars to create, they usually try to project their revenue to be around 2x higher. Consequently, this causes games to put their price tag at the said range ($70-100 dollars.) All of these Triple A games, or projects coming from a big game agency with a sizable budget tend to spend a lot of money in development.
Not only does the game cost money to develop, the development team usually needs to spend a high budget on hiring workers. These could be game developers, artists, writers, sound designers, testers, and more. An example of this is Rockstar Games, also known as the creators of the popular Grand Theft Auto series and Red Dead Redemption II. These people working and creating the game costed the development agency "Rockstar Games" multi millions to pay.
The marketing budget is also limited. If the team wants to make money, they have to spend tons on advertisements and other ways to get the game out to the public. When a game is completely unknown and nobody really knows about it, only a couple players end up trying it resulting in poor results. Triple A games will still get lots of recognition, but the amount of newcomers will be pretty low. They'll also have to advertise DLCs or special events to keep new players coming. Without it, the number of people trying out the new game will be low.
All of these reasons give you a preview on the logic behind these game's pricing. These prices may be expensive, but the developers have to make some kind of profit. In between marketing, money used to develop, paying workers, and a lot more reasons, this causes the game to be very pricey
