Times change, and so do circumstances. In the years between the release of GTA5 and the upcoming launch of GTA6, developer Rockstar and the entire gaming industry have expanded, with development costs rising accordingly. But long before the era when production budgets easily surpassed $1 billion, a new Grand Theft Auto title was considered something that could be made "with scraps"—in other words, completed by a team of fewer than 100 people over a few years, reportedly with a budget of just $10 million.
On the eve of GTA6's release, a startling fact sparked heated discussion within the GTA player community. Del Walker, a senior game developer formerly with Naughty Dog.exe and Respawn Entertainment, reposted an old USA Today article from 2006 online, which mentioned that GTA: San Andreas sold over 12 million copies within just 16 months of its October 2004 release. Using a loose estimate, assuming all sales were at the base price of $50, the total revenue would be approximately $600 million.
This figure was widely mentioned during the media frenzy surrounding the famous "Hot Coffee" scandal involving San Andreas, including reports from outlets like NBC News, which are still accessible today.
This total revenue did not all go to Rockstar or its publisher, Take-Two Interactive. Another set of figures better highlights its return on investment—reportedly, the production budget for GTA: San Andreas was only about $10 million, a claim supported by two reliable sources.
Wikipedia cites a paid article from The Wall Street Journal dated December 21, 2004, which mentioned that the game's budget was $10 million. Adjusted for inflation, $10 million in 2004 is roughly equivalent to $18 million today.
On the same day, The Ottawa Citizen in Ontario, Canada, also published a related report, which is similarly available in paid online archives. Excerpts were quoted by the GTA Fan Wiki. The report cited then-Take-Two President Paul Eibeler (who left in 2007), stating that the production budget for San Andreas was "under $10 million."
Looking back at that $10 million figure is interesting because this cost threshold has recently become a soft reference standard for AA game development—mid-sized projects with reasonable budgets relative to their scale and performance exceeding expectations. For studios exhausted by the highs and lows of today's AAA "high-stakes development," AA games might offer a way out.
Today, the GTA series represents the pinnacle of high-budget game development, a level of investment only the GTA series can afford, and only Rockstar can deliver such scale and precision thanks to its brand heritage, financial backing, and vast employee team (plus outsourced staff). By the way, the Ultimate Edition of GTA6 is priced at $100 for full access; the Standard Edition is $80, which has become the new price ceiling for some AAA games.
Walker commented: "Learning that San Andreas cost only about $10 million to produce, with no DLC, multiplayer mode, or microtransactions, yet earned back $600 million, feels as absurd as watching someone dunk barefoot." In contrast, the massive profits of GTA5 largely came from monetizing GTA Online over many years. It can be said that GTA6 is primarily Rockstar's vehicle for next-generation large-scale online content.
A prime example for comparison is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a hit turn-based RPG developed by the small French studio Sandfall Interactive, whose team consists mostly of newcomers. Its development budget was also under $10 million, highlighting just how exaggerated the increase in game development costs has been over the past two decades.
In the past, this amount would have been enough to create an entirely new Grand Theft Auto game. Today, while this sum is certainly not insignificant, it's merely a drop in the bucket for the GTA series, almost negligible. Nowadays, major publishers and smaller studios struggling in the industry's financial tides are dealing with soaring costs, one method being large-scale layoffs, as many high-stakes development projects have fallen through.
Interestingly, the controversial event that sparked numerous reports back then—the lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office in January 2006, accusing Rockstar of hiding pornographic content in GTA: San Andreas (i.e., sex scenes unlockable only via mods)—led to retailers pulling the game from shelves, which may have affected sales. Naturally, removing a game from shelves impacts sales, but conversely, the notoriety of the "Hot Coffee" scandal might have actually boosted sales around the time of its brief removal.
Coincidentally, a newspaper report from 2004 also contained a prophetic statement about game development budgets. A female Microsoft spokesperson, while discussing the costs of Halo 2, mentioned that game development costs were already rising at that time. (According to a July 2015 speech by Microsoft veteran Chip Pedersen, Halo 2 had a production cost of $40 million and an additional $80 million in marketing expenses. Just think about how much Take-Two spent on marketing GTA6—it's staggering.)
She stated at the time: "The cost of creating top-tier games continues to rise, but we are looking for ways to help the industry curb this upward trend." I don't know who this woman is or where she is now, but I hope she knows just how accurate her prediction was.