Abstract:
The world is changing. In the years from the release of "GTA5" to the upcoming launch of "GTA6", developer Rockstar has expanded along with the entire gaming industry, and development costs have also increased. But long before production budgets easily topped $1 billion, a new "Grand Theft Auto" title could be said to be "made with scraps" - in other words, it took a team of less than 100 people several years to complete with a reported budget of just $10 million.
On the eve of the release of "GTA6", a surprising fact sparked heated discussion in the GTA player community. Del Walker, a senior game developer who once worked for Naughty Dog and Respawn Entertainment, forwarded an old USA Today news from 2006 online, which mentioned that after the release of "GTA: San Andreas" in October 2004, sales exceeded 12 million copies in just 16 months. Using a loose estimate, assuming all sales are based on a base selling price of $50, total revenue would be about $600 million.
This data was widely mentioned in the reporting boom of the famous "Hot Coffee" incident in "San Andreas", and relevant reports from media such as NBC News can still be found to this day.
Not all of this total revenue belongs to Rockstar or publisher Take-Two Interactive, and another set of data better highlights its investment-output ratio - it is reported that the production budget of "GTA: San Andreas" is only about US$10 million, a statement supported by two reliable sources.
Wikipedia cites a paid article from the Wall Street Journal on December 21, 2004, which mentioned that the game had a budget of $10 million. Adjusted for inflation, $10 million in 2004 is equivalent to about $18 million today.
The "Ottawa Citizen" in Ontario, Canada, also published a relevant report on the same day. The article is also archived online for a fee, and the GTA Fan Wiki excerpted the relevant fragments. The report quoted then-Take-Two president Paul Aberle (who left in 2007) as saying that the production budget for "San Andreas" was "less than $10 million."
It’s interesting to look at this $10 million figure now, because this cost line has recently become a soft reference standard for AA-level game development—a work of medium size, a reasonable budget and project scale, and a performance that exceeds expectations. For studios that are exhausted by the ups and downs of today's "high-roller development" of AAA games, AA-level games may be a way out.
Today, the GTA series represents the pinnacle of high-budget game development. Only the GTA series can afford this level of investment, and only Rockstar can create works of this scale and precision with its own brand accumulation, financial support, and large employee team (plus outsourced personnel). By the way, the ultimate version of "GTA6" is priced at US$100, which allows you to experience all the content; the basic version is priced at US$80, which has become the new price limit for some 3A games.
Walker commented on this: "I learned that the production cost of "San Andreas" was only about 10 million US dollars. Without DLC, multiplayer mode and in-app purchases, it made back 600 million US dollars. It felt as outrageous as watching someone else dunk barefoot." In contrast, most of the huge profits of "GTA5" came from the realization of many years of operation of "GTA Online". It can be said that "GTA6" is first and foremost the carrier of Rockstar's next-generation large-scale online content.
The most representative reference is "Light and Shadow: Expedition 33". This popular turn-based RPG was developed by Sandfall Interactive, a small French studio, and most of the team members are newcomers. Its development budget is also less than 10 million US dollars. Comparing the two shows how exaggerated the increase in game development costs has been in the past 20 years.
In the past, this money was enough to make a new "Grand Theft Auto". Nowadays, this amount of money is certainly not a small amount, but it is just a fraction of the GTA series, almost negligible. Today, major publishers, as well as smaller studios struggling with the industry's financial wave, are dealing with soaring costs, including large-scale layoffs as many high-roller development projects go to waste.
Interestingly, the controversy that spawned a large number of related reports that year—the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office filed a lawsuit in January 2006, accusing Rockstar of hiding pornographic content (i.e., sex scenes that can only be unlocked through MOD) in "GTA: San Andreas"—had caused retailers to remove the game from the shelves, which may have affected sales. The removal of the game from shelves will naturally affect sales, but conversely it can also be said that the notoriety of the "hot coffee" incident actually boosted sales before and after the game was briefly removed from shelves.
Coincidentally, the 2004 newspaper report also contained a prophetic statement about game development budgets. A Microsoft spokeswoman discussed the cost of Halo 2 in reference to game development costs, which were rising even at the time. (According to a speech given by Microsoft veteran Chip Pedersen in July 2015, the production cost of "Halo 2" was US$40 million, and marketing expenses were an additional US$80 million. It is staggering to think about how much Take-Two spent on the marketing of "GTA6".)
She said at the time: "The cost of building top games continues to rise, but we are looking for ways to help the industry control the rising costs." I don't know who this woman is or where she is now, but I hope she knows how accurate she was back then.
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