TAKE-TWO · PRICING · 9 AUGUST 2026
Take-Two set two different prices this year. Grand Theft Auto VI costs $79.99 for the Standard Edition on the US PlayStation Store. NBA 2K27’s Standard Edition is $69.99 on the same store. Same publisher, same fiscal year, a ten dollar gap between the two, and someone finally asked Strauss Zelnick to account for it. What came back was not a defence of the higher number. It was an argument that games have been getting cheaper for twenty years.
One note on the figures before anything else. Everybody on the call rounded. They said $80 and $70; the store says $79.99 and $69.99. We use the store prices because those are what get charged, but the round numbers are the ones Take-Two and its analysts are working with, and the argument below is about the round numbers.
The $10 gap, and the answer to a different question
Brian Pitz of BMO Capital Markets asked it directly: “You recently announced the $80 base game for GTA 6, but ultimately decided to leave NBA 2K27 base pricing at $70.” He went on to ask about “being able to price games at a more premium price with more traditional AAA game prices around the $70 price point”.
Zelnick did not answer the comparison. He answered a different question, which is whether $80 is expensive at all.
He said: “Our goal is to deliver way more value to consumers than what we charge them. And, you know, the truth is that the real cost of a AAA video game is a whole lot lower today than it was 20 years ago. Pricing has not kept pace with inflation.” Then the line that will be quoted back at Rockstar in November: “to say that we expect that Grand Theft Auto VI will be an incredible bargain as experiences go is a gross understatement.”
He finished with a sentence that is easy to skip and worth keeping. “Our goal is not to maximize price.”
What $59.99 in 2005 is worth now
“Pricing has not kept pace with inflation” is not an opinion. It is a testable statement, so we tested it.
The modern standard price was set in 2005, when the Xbox 360 arrived with games carrying a $59.99 recommended price, up from the $49.99 that had held for years before it. Run $59.99 from 2005 through US consumer price inflation and you get roughly $102.60 in 2026 money, a cumulative rise of about 71%.
So the Standard Edition of Grand Theft Auto VI, at $79.99, is around 22% cheaper in real terms than a standard game was when the Xbox 360 launched. The Ultimate Edition, at $99.99, still sits below the inflation-adjusted 2005 standard price. On the measure Zelnick invoked, his claim holds.
What the measure does not settle is the rest of it. It says nothing about whether the cost of making these games has risen faster than consumer prices, and nothing about what a publisher earns after the box price. That second part matters at Take-Two more than at most: mobile was 53% of the company this quarter, and the money there arrives in small amounts over years rather than once at the till. A $79.99 game is the start of the revenue, not the whole of it. Zelnick’s answer is true and incomplete at the same time, which is the normal condition of an honest earnings-call answer.
The bonus that is not in the Ultimate Edition
Alec Brondolo of Wells Fargo asked the sharper question. Red Dead Redemption 2, he said, “launched with 3 SKUs”, meaning three editions at three prices. Grand Theft Auto VI has two, and the more expensive one does not include early access, “which I think has been a big part of the hook or the upsell driver on some of the other titles over the last several years”.
Zelnick declined: “we don’t tend to give a lot of color around pricing or additions. We leave that to our labels.”
He then offered a rationale for the two-tier structure without addressing the missing early access at all. “I think Rockstar feels that offering a phenomenal, uh, value at $80 makes sense for some consumers, and then offering incremental value at a modestly increased price makes sense for consumers.” Read that carefully: it is Zelnick characterising what he believes Rockstar feels, not Rockstar explaining itself. He added that “given the hype around this title, I mean, I think we could have made any number of other pricing choices.”
Which leaves the actual question standing. Nobody at Rockstar or Take-Two has explained why the Ultimate Edition drops the one bonus most publishers lead with. The editions comparison lists what the extra $20 does buy. It does not buy playing early, and no reason for that has been given by anyone on the record.
Zelnick’s own argument against the pre-orders
Brondolo also asked whether strong pre-orders are really incremental or just demand pulled forward from launch week. Zelnick called the pre-orders “exceptional” and said “no one’s ever seen anything like this before at Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Or in the industry.”
Then he argued against himself, unprompted. “That said, you could absolutely be right. We just don’t know. So could demand be pulled forward? Sure.” And the part worth remembering when the projections start: “we haven’t sold one unit yet. You can cancel a preorder.” He described the company as “sort of allergic to victory laps”.
That is a chief executive volunteering the strongest argument against his own good news, and declining to attach a number to it. Take-Two gave no pre-order figure at all this quarter, and left guidance unchanged.
What to take from it
Three things survive the call. The $80 is being defended as value rather than justified as an increase, which is a different argument and a more durable one. The inflation claim underneath it checks out against the actual numbers, as far as it goes. And the one decision people keep asking about, the missing early access, remains unexplained by anybody with the authority to explain it.
Zelnick’s longer answers were about what happens after November. On the price itself he was brief, confident, and careful not to promise anything he would have to defend later.
Sources
- Take-Two Interactive, Q1 FY2027 earnings call transcript. This is our transcription of record and the source of every quotation above. Take-Two publishes prepared remarks but no official transcript of the question and answer session, so the exact wording rests on this one transcription.
- Take-Two Interactive, Q1 FY2027 earnings call, 7 August 2026, attended live by PlayTheory.
- The substance of both exchanges was corroborated against two independent reports of the same call: MarketBeat’s call summary and GuruFocus’s call highlights. Both carry the $80 against $70 comparison, the inflation argument, the refusal to detail edition strategy, and the pre-order caution, in their own paraphrase.
- After publication we located independent corroboration of the central line: Zelnick repeated the pricing argument in a separate interview with IGN, published 9 August 2026, whose headline carries the same phrase. The exact wording of the call quotations still rests on the transcription above; the argument itself no longer rests on a single source.
- US CPI inflation calculation, 2005 to 2026. $59.99 in 2005 equals approximately $102.60 in 2026 dollars, a cumulative increase of 70.99%.
- Contemporary 2005 reporting on the $59.99 Xbox 360 price point, rising from the previous $49.99 standard.
- Grand Theft Auto VI on the US PlayStation Store: Standard $79.99, Ultimate $99.99, release 19 November 2026. Checked 9 August 2026.
- NBA 2K27 on the US PlayStation Store: Standard $69.99, Deluxe $99.99, Ultra $149.99. Checked 9 August 2026.
Cover: PlayTheory treatment. T2 mark: Take-Two Interactive.