Excitement for the sequel to Grand Theft Auto V was always going to reach fever-pitch, so this level of hype was to be expected. But with pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI officially open… should you put your money down? Let’s get into all of that today.
Back in the day, when games came on cartridges or discs, pre-ordering could make sense in certain cases. There could be limited copies of some titles, especially at launch, and if you lived in a region like the rural area where I grew up, there might only be one or two video game retailers. If the store you went to had sold out of a particular title, it could mean a long journey to track down another one – or a long wait. I pre-ordered or reserved games under those circumstances a few times – and I did the same for books, video cassettes, and DVDs, too. When something you really want is coming out, and you don’t have the time or energy to queue up at midnight to grab a copy, pre-ordering or reserving your copy just… made a lot of sense.
But that isn’t the world we live in anymore.
Sure, some console players – especially on Nintendo, but also on PlayStation and Xbox – still buy physical copies of all of their games. But is that the norm anymore? And even if you’re one of the players in that category, chances are you still buy downloadable content, receive patches and updates digitally, or occasionally splash out on a digital-only title. The industry has moved on, and fewer and fewer discs and cartridges are sold every year.
Grand Theft Auto VI will be available digitally on both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles. There are literally *infinite* copies of digital games, so there’s no chance you’ll miss out. GTA 6 might sell out physically for a time – maybe. But even if it does, or even if it’s sold out in your local area, those digital copies will remain available. There’s no “FOMO,” because you have literally zero chance of missing out on playing Grand Theft Auto VI the day it launches – if that’s what you want to do.
Nowadays, most big-budget games come with day-one patches and updates anyway, *especially* titles on disc. Day-one bug-fixes and last-second patches are commonplace. But here’s the thing with GTA 6: you don’t get a disc even if you buy a “physical copy;” all you get is a download code in a pretty case.
In short… there’s no advantage to buying the game physically over downloading it digitally, even if you have a slow internet connection.
Speaking as we were of bugs, do you remember Cyberpunk 2077? That game – which generated a similar level of hype back in 2020 – launched in such an appalling state that many folks considered it to be literally “unplayable,” and the game was yanked off Sony’s PlayStation Store as a result, with plenty of refunds being offered. Cyberpunk 2077 is, to me, the game that best embodies the “no pre-orders!” movement. If folks had been willing to wait even a day, a mere twenty-four hours, instead of rushing to pre-order… they’d have seen the state the game was in.
To be clear, I’m categorically *not* suggesting that GTA 6 will launch in such a rotten state! Although the recent launch of the atrocious GTA 3 Trilogy Remaster should be enough to give anyone pause; that was a total fuck-up. But for such a big game, and one developed by Rockstar’s main team, I’m pretty confident that the launch version of GTA 6 will be functionally playable.
That doesn’t mean, however, that it will be the “best” version of the game.
Patches, bug fixes, and free updates happen all the time. Rockstar’s last two big games – Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption II – both received numerous patches after they launched, tweaking and improving them. The launch version of basically any game in 2026 is demonstrably worse than the version you might play even just a few days later. So, once again, why would you want to play on day one, knowing that to be the case?
It isn’t my intention to shit all over the hype or excitement anyone is feeling for Grand Theft Auto VI. I’m sure that the game will be entertaining, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it one day, too. But I also believe we’re at a point now where pre-ordering a title isn’t just bad for individual players, it’s actively harmful to gaming as a whole. It encourages bad behaviour from games companies – things like paying extra to play the game on its *real* release date instead of a few days later, or releasing incomplete, bug-riddled messes in the full knowledge that they’re already going to make a huge profit. The biggest corporations in the industry are getting worse, charging higher prices for less content, and paywalling off more and more pieces of titles… and pre-ordering helps them get away with it.
I know, however, that I’m shouting into the void. Pre-order numbers for GTA 6 are going to be huge; this is arguably the most highly-anticipated release of the year across the *entire* entertainment sector. But I still think it’s worth *trying* to dissuade people from putting their money down unnecessarily for a title that – I would certainly argue – is overpriced, that we still don’t have a ton of information about, and to reward a publisher and a developer who, in my opinion, have been misbehaving pretty badly for years.
Some of the things Rockstar and Take-Two have achieved with Grand Theft Auto V have been emulated – or attempted, anyway – by other titles across the games industry in the thirteen years since GTA 5 was released. Microtransactions and an in-game currency in a title that players have to pay for up-front has become normalised thanks, in large part, to Grand Theft Auto V’s success, and we’re seeing the impact of that now. Going all-in on live service, always-online multiplayer titles – as Rockstar and Take-Two have done – has been a huge weight around the neck of many studios and publishers across the entire video games industry, as corporations have tried to recreate GTA 5′s success… and income.
And there’s more.
Grand Theft Auto VI should’ve been created and released years ago. But because its predecessor has been such a cash cow, Rockstar and Take-Two put the game on hold. They also sacrificed GTA 5′s planned DLC at the altar of the game’s online mode, cancelled Agent – Rockstar’s planned Cold War-era spy title – and even quietly stepped away from Red Dead Online, not because it wasn’t profitable, but because it wasn’t *as* profitable as GTA 5′s online mode.
Grand Theft Auto V has been a double-edged sword for the games industry. On the one hand, it’s introduced lots of new players to interactive media, and demonstrated that video games can go toe-to-toe with films and TV programmes in terms of profitability and cultural impact. On the other, it poured diesel on the fire of the “live service” trend, pushing other companies further down that path – a path that has led to billions of dollars being pissed away on titles like Concord and Highguard, games that were never going to make their money back. And that’s been bad for the industry overall, as well as arguably caused game development elsewhere to be under-invested, to stagnate, and even regress in some cases.
Rockstar and Take-Two have become arrogant. Forgetting the series’ PC roots, Grand Theft Auto VI won’t get a simultaneous PC launch – something practically every other AAA title can manage. Ports of ancient games, like 2010’s Red Dead Redemption, are belatedly launched on PC for a ridiculous price tag. And there seems to be less of an expectation, and more of an *entitlement* in the Take-Two boardroom that GTA 6 will earn even more money even more quickly than its predecessor.
Even if the game is good… I don’t want to support a company like that. Certainly not by pre-ordering their latest title.
Some of the conversation and analysis surrounding Grand Theft Auto VI seems to be praising Take-Two and Rockstar for resisting the temptation to try to launch the game with a $100 price tag. And that is ridiculous. GTA 6 is going to be $80 in the United States for the base version of the game – though, naturally, the “ultimate edition;” i.e. the complete version of the game *without* content having been cut out, will retail for $100. In the UK, that’s £70 for the basic version and £90 for the complete edition.
Since Nintendo launched the first $80 base version of a game with Mario Kart World, other greedy corporations in the industry have been salivating at the prospect of selling their own titles for the same money. We’ve seen it with Xbox, who tried to push The Outer Worlds 2 at that price, and there are other examples, too. But most titles, at least for now, still go for $70 or $60 – so this $80 price tag is nothing to celebrate, nor should Rockstar or Take-Two receive *any* praise whatsoever for capping their greed at a “mere” $80!
I’ve been a GTA player since the very first top-down game in the late ’90s. In fact. Grand Theft Auto is the first game I can remember buying that had a BBFC “18” rating. I had fun with that game, its sequel, and its London spin-off, and I enjoyed the series all over again on the Xbox, when I played Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andreas. I’m by no means a “hater” of this series, and I still hope to play and enjoy Grand Theft Auto VI if and when it comes to PC… and perhaps when it goes on sale!
But pre-ordering this game feels pointless, and even if I owned a current-gen console, I wouldn’t.
You gain nothing – the game’s all-digital anyway – and with patches, hotfixes, and updates bound to arrive within days or weeks of launch, why would you want to sign up to play a demonstrably, objectively *worse* version of the game? There are so many other things to play! If you’re like me, you’re bound to have a backlog of titles you haven’t gotten around to playing yet. And if you’re a subscriber to something like Game Pass, there’s a whole library of titles out there. I just don’t see any point in pre-ordering Grand Theft Auto VI when we don’t know what kind of state the launch version will be in, we don’t even know for certain that this long-delayed title will actually make its purported November relase date, and when it’s fully-digital anyway, even if you buy a “physical” copy. Do yourself a favour and wait… at least wait till launch day, if not a few days after. Make sure Take-Two and Rockstar have earned your $80-100 before you commit.
Grand Theft Auto VI is scheduled to be released in November 2026 for Xbox Series S/X and PlayStation 5. A PC release has not been confirmed. The Grand Theft Auto series – including GTA 6 and other titles discussed above – is the copyright of Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 