A billion-dollar video game budget may seem surprising at first glance, but it starts to make sense when you consider that a modern game often has as many moving parts as a Hollywood production. You need actors, writers, programmers, animators, designers, and composers, among others, to create a large open-world game. And aside from a few outliers like the Avatar series, the films have generally been in active production for a few years. GTA VI has been in active development for almost a decade. Once a game is near completion, it usually goes through a rigorous testing process that requires yet another team.
Aside from a handful of indie breakthroughs, it’s common for game budgets to quickly reach the double- and triple-digit millions these days. Game development can also take several years, with hundreds of employees dedicated to a single project.
However, development costs and times have continued to increase. In 2023, court documents revealed that Sony Interactive Entertainment spent $212 million to Horizon Forbidden West and $220 million on The Last of Us: Part II.
More recently, another court filing revealed that Activision’s development costs for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War exceeded $700 million over the game’s life cycle. Modern live service games require constant development resources for additional maps, game modes, and new content in general. The initial budget for the base game was certainly under $700 million.
GTA VI is close to crossing this threshold, even based on conservative estimates. And that’s before even considering its online mode, which, barring any huge surprises, won’t debut alongside the single-player experience in November 2026.
So, will all this pay off? Even though it’s been over a decade since GTA VFollowing the release of ‘s online mode, leaked revenue data suggests that Rockstar is still earning millions of dollars in weekly revenue from microtransactions and GTA+ memberships.
With so much money on the table, it’s perhaps no surprise that Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Interactive are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, to GTA VI. The single-player experience is expected to eventually sell hundreds of millions of copies and the online mode could have a loyal fan base for the next decade and beyond. In 2013, GTA V generated $800 million in sales in the single day following its launch, with total revenue now hovering around the $10 billion mark.
