Warhorse co-founder Martin Klima has two good reasons for you not to like him: he doesn't like GTA: San Andreas, and he would like GTA 6 to “blaze a trail” for higher game prices. The first reason isn't even that important, because it doesn't affect anyone else, but the second one on the other hand does. Klima hopes that GTA 6 will be a hit, but not for the reasons everyone else hopes—rather, so it gives courage to other studios to raise game prices.
He assesses that this is necessary for the survival of the industry, which is facing a huge problem for which there is no other solution. As he says himself, games have become extremely expensive to make, and that trend will only continue into the future because computing power is growing, and players' expectations increase accordingly: everyone then expects bigger and more complex games. According to his estimate, player counts have peaked. He said: "We destroyed retail, and we took all their money."
The reason why Rockstar, or Take-Two itself, matters in this whole story is that, according to him, it is the only company "who can afford, or who can dare" to raise game prices without triggering huge counterproductive consequences. "The last thing you can do is to increase the unit price," Klima continued. "That would help a lot, but everybody's scared to death about it. Now, hopefully, GTA will blaze the trail, and it will allow us to increase the cost."
He also added that the Covid-19 pandemic created an "artificial demand," which was merely a temporary effect that passed, leading to a wave of layoffs where executives overestimated their capabilities.
Interestingly, GTA 6 costs £69.99 for the Standard Edition in the U.K., which is a fairly standard price for an average AAA game. On the other hand, that exact same standard edition costs $79.99 in the U.S.A., which is 10 dollars more expensive than the regular maximum prices we are used to. The Ultimate Edition, which mostly contains cosmetics, goes up to 100 dollars.
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