GTA 6 and price rises are going to destroy gaming forever - Reader's Feature

Metro

04-05-2025

The $80 price rise for Xbox games and GTA 6's delay has a reader worrying that the video games industry as we know it is coming to an end.
I started writing this thinking I was only going to be complaining about Xbox's price rises. And then I saw the news about GTA 6's delay. It's been quite the week.
A lot of people thought that GTA 6 must be delayed, given the complete lack of information, so that wasn't a surprise. Although it means we can now ignore anything Take-Two say in the future, given what they said about the release date. If it was a few months I could understand that they were just trying to be optimistic, but more than a year? That's not the sort of delay that creeps up on you.
Whether you're upset about it or not, the delay alone is going to have a big effect on gaming as a whole, but so too is the fact that Microsoft is moving towards $80 as the cost of its games. And since they're too embarrassed to say what the price is in the UK, I'm going to take it for granted that that means £80 here.
You don't need me to tell you that £80 is far too much. You can talk about how that compares to movies and gigs, and all that other stuff, and I'd agree: in proportion video games are better value for money. But that's not the point. The point is that £80 is such a huge chunk of money it rules out all but the biggest games for everyone, which is almost where we are now anyway.
We constantly hear that nobody is buying new games, except Call Of Duty and EA Sports FC, and most people are sticking with the same game for years, just endlessly buying more cosmetics and other microtransaction junk. What they get out of that I couldn't begin to imagine but it's already nearly brought the games industry to its knees.
Now we have Microsoft's annoucement, which is not only going to make impulse purchases a thing of the past but will put people off the idea of buying video games entirely and just file them away in their heads as something that is too expensive and not worth the trouble anymore. Unless it's free-to-play garbage.
Of course, Microsoft won't be the last to announce a price rise. Nintendo already has and Sony is probably only delaying to try and make Xbox look bad. Other publishers will be champing at the bit, and I imagine that if Call Of Duty and EA Sports FC aren't £80 this year they will be next year (EA may take their time, given EA Sports FC 25 was a bit of a dud).
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And then we have GTA 6. Everyone has already accepted the fact that it's going to cost at least £80 and probably £100 or more. And other publishers will immediately leap on that too and think, 'If they can do it, why not us?'
My other concern with GTA 6, is that if most people are already only playing the same one or two games, what is going to happen when all the pent up desire of 13 years crashes to earth with GTA 6?
The game's going to be the best-selling game ever, obviously, but if it's even half as involved as GTA 5 people are going to be playing it forever. It will become the game. It'll be so popular that there's literally no point releasing anything else because even if people can afford them (which they can't) they haven't got time to play them, because you've got to get your two hours a day in on GTA 6.
A video games industry crash has seemed on the horizon for years, but here it is finally coming into view. And this one isn't just going to be limited to the US.
When I say destroy gaming I don't mean it literally. There'll still be gatcha rubbish on mobile, there'll still be some indie games (the lower budget ones at least), and Call Of Duty, EA Sports FC, Fortnite, GTA, and Minecraft will continue to be 90% of everything. But the actual games that you – as a person that was interested enough to visit this site and read this far into my feature – care about? They're done. More Trending
No one can compete with GTA 6 – it's got to the point where it's too big and too expensive for anyone to even try – and no one wants anything else anyway. Well, I do. But I'm afraid we're all going to have to admit that we're in the minority and when the games industry does implode, we'll be upset but most people won't even notice anything changed – because they only played one game anyway.
By reader Gaston
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