GTA 4 (2008) had a development budget of 100 million in (146.5 million today) it made $500 million (730 million today) in the first week and sold 25 million copies by 2013. GTA 5 (2013) had a development cost of 265 million (354 million today) it made 1.15 billion (1.56 billion today) in the first week and had sold 205 million copies as of 2025 and a total gross of 8.5 billion as of today (including GTA online sales). RDR 2 (2018) had a development cost of 540 million ( 678 million today) and made 725 million in the first 3 days (909 million today) and sold 57 million copies as of 2023. GTA 6 is rumored to have a development cost of 2 billion and it is the first game to have a female main character in story mode. To achieve the success level of GTA 5 it would need to make more than GTA 5 has made in total in the first week. That’s 124 million copies of $70 in the first week.
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If it is just a refill on GTA V (But with less calories) then the entire joke will be what the game has become.
Even if it starts off with a Harvey Dent "Become the villain" speech the entire base will collapse and something new will become the standard-bearer.
Rockstar has fuck you money and could hold the line. But that requires balls and I've a funny feeling that lunch around the conference table has been Jim's Sticky Ring and Yogurt Shot for a while now.
They have zero competition currently and the resources to outdo any potential competitor. Saints row went woke and died, payday 3 was shit, mafia/sleeping dogs are dead. They for all intents and purposes have a monopoly like madden but only have to make 1 game a decade and spam cheap online content with some goofy characters.
Not just zero competition, but zero competition in two of the most powerful demographics in the video game industry, teenage boys and blacks.
Guys who only buy 2-3 games a year, from the same franchises, and play them endlessly forever, with social pressures maximized by literally everyone of their friends doing the same.
As your math showed, the failure won't be it being record breakingly popular. It'll be because the sheer cost of development requires them to sell a number that is almost impossible at a cost to the consumer that will make even their biggest fans hesitate.
The biggest reason GTA 5 was such a huge seller even a decade later was that it became cheap (30 us) by 2016 and had a unique online that benefited from being the only game like GTA to ever go online, especially with that map size. That explosion saw the death of single player dlc because online sales blew it out of the water from “whales” who will drop 500+ a year on a game to have everything unlocked because, like you said, they play maybe 2-3 games in total which is usually some sport game, GTA, and some COD/ battle royal game. That reliability on online currency sales also makes the it easy to make it cheaper to buy to get them hooked on the basically “freemium” currency system. There’s no way this game will sell like 5, but it will sell enough to make a profit, get the whales and then lower the price to get the cheap players who keep the game active and give a reason for the whales to keep spending. Like I said, they would really have to just put out another game for a graphics update in ~10 years, and keep the social relevance online and it’s essentially a perpetual money machine.
There's a new Mafia game on the horizon but it does seem like all the big franchises have died.
Perhaps something completely new and unexpected can come in a define its own era.
Just looked it up, it looks amazing and hopefully woke free being 1900s Sicily
You'd think but I have a feeling we'll get a gay character in it and some of that True Romance racism just for comparison's sake of how things are different.
Probably a touch of feminism too.
All understandable enough if relevant to the story, it's the storytelling which might be the issue.
I'm hoping that the biggest concern will be if we get to 1925 to see Vito Scaletta being born. A means to tie him into every story or to keep the original trilogy as its own standing.
There is a new mafia game in the works though.