A Bank of America stock analyst has made the case that Grand Theft Auto VI should launch at $80, not $70, and the reasoning is less about Rockstar's bottom line and more about the rest of the industry's ability to keep charging premium prices.
The analyst's argument, explained
Omar Dessouky, a stock analyst at Bank of America, made the comments after speaking with attendees at IICON, the new executive-focused gaming conference in Las Vegas organized by the Entertainment Software Association. His core claim: the industry, which is perceived as struggling, would have difficulty selling games for $80 if GTA 6 came out at $70.
Here's the thing. That logic actually holds up. If Grand Theft Auto VI launches at $70 and delivers what everyone expects, which is a generation-defining open world with hundreds of hours of content, every other $70 game on the shelf suddenly looks like a much worse deal. Publishers trying to push the $80 price point for their own titles would have a very hard sell on their hands.
Dessouky also points to inflation as justification. Game prices relative to inflation have fallen steadily over the decades, making $80 a more defensible ask in 2026 than it might have seemed even a few years ago.
What Take-Two's CEO actually said
Strauss Zelnick addressed pricing during an on-stage interview at IICON, though he stopped short of naming a number. His comments were textbook value-framing: "Consumers pay for the value that you bring to them, and our job is to charge way way way less of the value delivery. How you feel about something you buy is the intersection of the thing itself and what you pay for. Consumers need to feel like the thing itself is amazing and the price they were charged was fair for what they got."
Read alongside Dessouky's comments, it sounds a lot like Zelnick is positioning Grand Theft Auto VI as a product so far above the competition that a higher price is simply appropriate. He separately told Bloomberg that development costs have continued climbing and that AI savings have not materialized yet. "We haven't seen those costs decline yet. Maybe we will. Maybe we won't."
The game has reportedly been in development for close to a decade across multiple Rockstar studios worldwide. Some analysts have projected sales of around 25 million copies by day one. Zelnick told Bloomberg that 10 million day-one sales would actually be a disappointment, which gives you a sense of the scale Rockstar is operating at.
Console-first and the cost of serving the core
The PC exclusion is its own story. Skipping PC at launch is a meaningful sacrifice in potential revenue, and Zelnick addressed it directly with Bloomberg: "Rockstar always starts on console because I think with regard to a release like that you're judged by serving the core. Like really serving the core consumer. If your core consumer isn't there, if they're not served first and best, you kind of don't hit your other consumers."
That decision, combined with the scale of development and the expectations Zelnick himself has set, makes a price above $70 feel less like a money grab and more like a calculated industry move. Whether players see it that way is a different question entirely.
What most players miss in this conversation is that the $80 price point isn't just about Rockstar's margins. If Take-Two sets that ceiling with the biggest game release in years, it gives every other major publisher cover to follow. Take-Two has reaffirmed the November release window and a summer marketing push is expected to finally bring official pricing details into the open. For more gaming news and analysis as the release approaches, keep an eye on our gaming news.
