In earnings call last week, Strauss Zelnick, who is the CEO of Take-Two Interactive, presented some of his unique ideas about how video games should be monetized. The CEO of GTA 6’s publishing company presented the idea that video games are really cheap for the content and experience they offer and should be monetized in a different way.
The topic of video game prices is certainly an interesting one. Although some game developers take the approach of making their games free to play, other triple-A games come out with hefty price tags. Zelnick had an interesting view to present on this topic, also stating that since his views cannot be implemented into the game, it makes GTA one of the best value-for-money games on the market.
Sharing Take-Two’s method of calculating prices, Zelnick said:
In terms of our pricing for any entertainment property, basically the algorithm is the value of the expected entertainment usage, which is to say the per hour value times the number of expected hours plus the terminal value that's perceived by the customer in ownership, if the title is owned rather than rented or subscribed to.
To explain this, he means that the value or price of a game should be decided by factoring in what you get in the game per hour, the total number of hours you get, and what you think the overall value is for the game that you’re playing. This basically says that if a game is longer, it should be priced higher since the player is getting more hours of content. Zelnick continued:
By that standard our prices are still very, very low, because we offer many hours of engagement, the value of the engagement is very high. So I think the industry as a whole offers a terrific price to value opportunity for consumers.
Will GTA 6 have a higher price tag than usual?
GTA 6 will not have a higher base price than the usual $70. Here are all the versions of the game that will be available to pre-order once the trailer goes live in December along with their price:
Zelnick explains that although their game does offer a lot more value for the money and their payment model should be the way he describes, it simply cannot be implemented, and the last price increase to $70 in 2022 is the maximum they can hope for. Although this may sound like a new idea, it is not unheard of for game development companies to want to increase their prices much higher than they can.
There have been precious few pricing increases in the business. The price increase to, for example, 70 dollars for certain frontline products [in 2022] was the first price increase for many years after many generations. So I think we offer terrific value to consumers.
This definitely comes as a sigh of relief to players and fans who are waiting to get their hands on the upcoming GTA 6 but don’t want to spend a fortune on an upfront payment to just purchase the game. However, this doesn’t mean that GTA 6 won’t have some type of post-launch monetization, most likely in the form of microtransactions, much like the current GTA Online. Players will have to wait and find out what approach Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive take for their upcoming game.
