With GTA looming, consoles are getting expensive at the worst possible time

The release of Grand Theft Auto VI is a singular moment, the kind of massive cultural phenomenon that makes people want to go out and buy a console to play it. It is the preeminent modern example of what’s known as a “system seller.” There’s almost certainly a large audience of people who were waiting to buy a console because all they really play on it is GTA, and they haven’t needed to upgrade since GTA V. But there’s one big problem: At the same time people are getting excited to finally play GTA, the hardware it runs on is becoming prohibitively expensive.

Fans have been waiting for the next Grand Theft Auto for a long time. GTA V originally launched in 2013, and it was subsequently ported to multiple generations of consoles, landed on PC, and, with a little help from its enduring online mode, went on to become perhaps the most lucrative single entertainment product in history. That’s a lot to live up to, and the hype around GTA VI is unlike any game I’ve ever seen. The launch, on November 19th for the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S, is expected to be so big that other game publishers are moving out of the way for fear of getting lost in the shuffle.

When developer Rockstar first confirmed that it was working on the game back in 2022, the two consoles were available at very different prices. The PlayStation 5 launched at $499.99 for the base model, but after a pair of price hikes, it now sits at $649.99. If you want the more powerful PS5 Pro — which might be a good idea for a presumably resource-intensive game like GTA VI — you’re looking at $899.99. Microsoft, meanwhile, has raised the price of its current-gen consoles three times since 2025. A lower-end Xbox Series S now costs $499.99, while the more powerful Series X tops out at $799.99. Both are up hundreds of dollars compared to their launch prices.

Those are steep increases, and they go against the conventional wisdom that buying a console at launch is a bad idea, because now things only get more expensive over time. This is particularly notable for a game like GTA VI. This week, Rockstar opened up preorders for the game, suggesting that there’s an almost nonexistent chance that it will be delayed again. So the audience that needs to upgrade their console to play it will be experiencing quite the sticker shock, no matter whether they decide to go the Xbox or PlayStation route. It’s the kind of increase that’s likely to cause many to reconsider whether they want to invest upwards of $600 — and in many cases much more — just to play a single video game. Many will likely wait it out and hope things get cheaper eventually.

There are other issues with GTA VI’s launch. At $79.99, it’s more expensive than most games, and there’s some controversy over the fact that the physical version doesn’t actually include a disc. But those are comparatively small hiccups that a game on the scale of GTA VI will likely overcome. The rising costs of consoles, on the other hand, could have a much greater impact on the game’s success.

Let’s put it this way: GTA V has sold a staggering 230 million copies to date, spread across the PC, PS3, PS4, PS5, and three generations of Xbox. Even if GTA VI was purchased by every single person who currently owns a PS5 and Xbox Series X / S, it still wouldn’t sell anywhere near that number. The PS5 has an install base of just over 90 million, while it’s estimated that Microsoft has sold around 30 million current-gen Xbox consoles. That’s not an insignificant number of people, but it’s also not a number that looks likely to grow much in the future given these price hikes. PS5 sales are absolutely tanking with the new price tag.

And it’s not like things are likely to change any time soon. In fact, when announcing its most recent hikes, Microsoft noted that “console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027.” And while it’s almost a certainty that GTA VI will eventually come to PC, even there component price increases have led to a very expensive present for anyone looking for a capable machine. Just look at Valve’s Steam Machine, which starts at $1,049. If you don’t already own the right hardware, playing the next Grand Theft Auto is going to be a very costly proposition.

Even if it doesn’t match the initial success of its predecessor, which earned a billion dollars in just three days, GTA VI will undoubtedly still be a massive hit. Few things are actually too big to fail, but GTA VI might be one of them. These games also tend to have a long tail — people are still buying GTA V more than a decade later — so there’s lots of time to reach its full audience. But the dire situation around modern video game consoles is still severely limiting how many people can play the game when it launches. The wait hasn’t just been long. It’s also going to be very expensive.