Games industry veteran showed how the industry has changed using GTA: San Andreas as an example – the budget was $10 million, and revenue exceeded $600 million in a year and a half
With GTA 6 close to launch, the Grand Theft Auto community has fixated on numbers that look almost impossible today. Veteran developer Del Walker, who worked at Naughty Dog and Respawn, shared an archived 2006 USA Today story reporting that GTA: San Andreas sold more than 12 million copies roughly 16 months after its October 2004 launch.
Assume, somewhat generously, that every copy sold at the $50 base price, and revenue comes to around $600 million. That isn't the same as Rockstar Games or publisher Take-Two Interactive's take, but the scale is clear. The figure appeared repeatedly in coverage of the Hot Coffee scandal, including an NBC News article that's still online.
The budget puts that number in context. GTA: San Andreas cost roughly $10 million to make, and two sources back that up. The first is a paywalled Wall Street Journal article from December 21, 2004, which Wikipedia cites. Adjusted for inflation, $10 million in 2004 is about $18 million today.
The second is an issue of the Canadian newspaper The Ottawa Citizen, published the same day and also archived online. The GTA Fandom wiki cites a snippet from it, in which then-Take-Two president Paul Eibeler, who left the publisher in 2007, said the game was made on a budget of "less than $10 million."
That $10 million mark has recently become a soft benchmark for AA development: mid-sized, responsibly budgeted games that punch above their weight. For studios worn down by the boom-and-bust bets of modern AAA, the format looks like an escape hatch.
GTA today sits at the peak of high-budget development. Only this series can swing that big, and only Rockstar can build a game at this scale and fidelity, thanks to its pedigree, backing, and army of employees and outside contractors. GTA 6 costs $80 for the base version and $100 for the Ultimate Edition, and $80 has become the new price ceiling for some AAA games.
Walker summed up the difference between eras:
"Finding out San Andreas cost like $10 mil to make, and made back $600 million without DLC, multiplayer or microtransactions, is like watching someone dunk barefoot."
The bulk of GTA 5 profits came from GTA Online monetization over several years. GTA 6 looks set to serve as a platform for Rockstar's next big online component.
The most prominent modern touchstone is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the breakout turn-based RPG from Sandfall Interactive. The small French team was made up mostly of junior developers, and the game's budget also came in under $10 million. It shows just how much development costs have exploded in 20 years.
That kind of money used to buy a new Grand Theft Auto. Now it's still serious cash, but a rounding error by GTA standards. Large publishers, and smaller companies treading water in the industry's financial currents, are reckoning with those costs, partly through layoffs affecting thousands of people when the bets don't pay off.
The scandal behind much of this coverage carries its own irony. In January 2006, the Los Angeles city attorney's office filed a lawsuit accusing Rockstar of concealing explicit content in GTA: San Andreas. The scenes were accessible only through mods, and retailers pulled the game from shelves for a time.
Getting yanked from stores certainly hurts sales. Then again, the notoriety of Hot Coffee may have fueled interest both before and after the game's brief disappearance from retail.
That same 2004 newspaper article also contains a prophetic quote about budgets. A Microsoft spokeswoman, discussing the cost of Halo 2, noted that game budgets were already rising. According to a July 2015 presentation from Microsoft veteran Chip Pedersen, Halo 2 cost $40 million to make and another $80 million to market.
"The costs to create stellar games continue to increase, but we are looking at ways to help the industry streamline rising costs," she said.
