Every GTA Launch Price, Adjusted for Inflation

GTA 6's $79.99 sticker is the highest nominal launch price in the series. Adjusted for inflation, it isn't the highest at all: GTA IV's $60 in April 2008 works out to about $94 in today's money, and GTA V's $60 in September 2013 to about $86. The $99.99 Ultimate Edition is a different story. Below is every mainline launch price we could pin to a period source, the arithmetic, and what it does and doesn't settle.

The table

Read it this way: in real terms, GTA 6 Standard costs less than San Andreas, GTA IV or GTA V did on day one. Ultimate costs more than any of them. GTA III and Vice City are missing on purpose, and the reason is below.

How we did the math

The index is the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), all items, US city average, not seasonally adjusted: BLS series CUUR0000SA0. The latest month published as of November 10, 2026 is September 2026, at 336.940. October's figure isn't out yet.

• Launch months used: October 2004 (190.9), April 2008 (214.823), September 2013 (234.149). We used the month each game went on sale in the US, not an annual average.
• GTA VI isn't adjusted. It's priced in 2026 dollars already. If you want to be strict, Rockstar announced the price in June 2026 (CPI-U 333.952), and carrying that to September gives $80.71 and $100.88. That's under 1%, so we left the sticker prices in the table.
• Where the index values came from: BLS's own data API was returning "database is locked" for this series when we checked, so we pulled the identical series from the St. Louis Fed's FRED mirror (CPIAUCNS, which is the same BLS CPI-U not-seasonally-adjusted index). The series has no value for October 2025; none of the months we use are affected.
• Period prices are as reported. The contemporary reports say "$50" and "$60". Shelf tags were probably a cent under that. We didn't change them, because a penny moves nothing and we'd rather not invent the 99 cents.

Everything in the last two columns of the table is our arithmetic, not a BLS, Rockstar or Take-Two figure.

Why GTA III and Vice City aren't in the table

We couldn't find a launch price for either in a retailer listing, press release or news story from the time. What we did find were average selling prices, which aren't the same thing:

• GameSpot's NPD chart for the week of May 19–25, 2002, about seven months after GTA III's October 2001 release, lists its "average price" as $49.
• CNN/Money's January 2003 column on Vice City's sales worked from "$50 per copy (the average price of the game)". That's an assumption for a revenue estimate, not a list price.

Average prices drift down as stores discount, so neither is a clean launch figure. If we find a period source for either game's launch price, we'll add the row. The 1997 GTA and GTA 2 aren't included for the same reason.

Another yardstick: hours of work

CPI tells you what a dollar buys. It doesn't tell you what a paycheck covers. BLS also publishes average hourly earnings for all private-sector employees (series CES0500000003), which starts in 2006, so it covers GTA IV onward. Our arithmetic:

Two caveats. This is an average across all private employees, so it's pulled up by high earners and says nothing about a teenager's allowance. And October 2026 is a first estimate that BLS will revise.

Is $80 too expensive? Both cases

The case that it isn't

• In real dollars the Standard Edition is the cheapest launch on the table: $79.99 against $86.34 for GTA V and $94.11 for GTA IV.
• By hours of work it's cheaper still: about 2.1 hours at the average wage, against 2.5 for GTA V and 2.8 for GTA IV.
• Thirteen years passed between GTA V and GTA VI. Prices across the economy rose about 44% over that stretch by CPI-U (our arithmetic from the two index values above). GTA's sticker rose 33%.

The case that it is

• Nobody pays in CPI-adjusted dollars. Your rent and groceries went up too, and the money for a game comes out of what's left. A 33% jump in the number on the box is real to the person paying it.
• The price that gets you everything is $99.99, which is more than GTA IV or GTA V cost in today's money. REPORTED Sensor Tower estimated in August that 89% of pre-orders were for Ultimate. Rockstar and Take-Two haven't confirmed any edition split (where that figure comes from).
• GTA V's $60 included GTA Online; Take-Two's October 2013 release called it "free with every copy." OFFICIAL Rockstar says GTA VI "features a single-player experience" at launch. A separate online mode has been reported but has no date or price.
• GTA VI runs only on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. If you don't own one, the console is the bigger number.

Our read: "GTA has never been this expensive" is wrong for Standard and right for Ultimate. Whether $79.99 is too much is a budget question the CPI can't answer for you. The editions page lists what the extra $20 buys, and the price page tracks regional pricing.

What this comparison leaves out

• Special editions. GTA IV and GTA V had pricier boxed editions. We didn't find period sources for their prices, so they're not here.
• Spending after launch. GTA Online's Shark Cards and GTA+ aren't in a launch price. Rockstar has said nothing about paid currency in GTA VI (what's confirmed).
• Quality and length. CPI adjusts for prices, not for what you get. Nobody outside Rockstar has played GTA VI, so we won't guess at value per hour.

For more sourced figures in one place, see GTA 6 by the numbers, and for when each of these games came out, the GTA timeline.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much was GTA V at launch in today's money?

GTA V cost $60 in September 2013, per Reuters. Using BLS CPI-U, that's about $86.34 in September 2026 dollars, by our calculation.

Is GTA 6 the most expensive GTA ever?

Only in nominal terms. Adjusted for inflation, GTA IV's $60 in April 2008 is about $94.11 today, more than GTA 6 Standard's $79.99. The $99.99 Ultimate Edition is higher than any earlier launch on our table.

What inflation data did you use?

BLS CPI-U, all items, US city average, not seasonally adjusted (series CUUR0000SA0), with September 2026 (336.940) as the latest month published. We multiplied each launch price by the September 2026 index divided by the launch-month index.

Why aren't GTA III and Vice City included?

We couldn't find a launch price for either in a period source. The figures we found were average selling prices months after launch, which aren't the same thing, so we left both games out.

Sources

• FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis): CPI-U, all items, not seasonally adjusted (CPIAUCNS, mirrors BLS CUUR0000SA0)
• FRED: BLS average hourly earnings, all private employees (CES0500000003)
• CNN/Money: San Andreas sales column, Chris Morris, October 2004
• Rockstar Games / Business Wire via Take-Two IR: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas ships for PlayStation 2, October 25, 2004
• Los Angeles Times via The Herald (Everett): New 'Grand Theft Auto' debuts today, April 28, 2008
• Reuters via Yahoo News: Take Two's GTA V starts strong with $800 mln in first-day sales, September 18, 2013
• NBC News: Grand Theft Auto V tops $800 million on first day
• Take-Two Interactive (SEC): Second quarter fiscal 2014 results, October 29, 2013
• Rockstar Games / Business Wire: Rockstar Games Announces Pre-Orders for Grand Theft Auto VI, June 24, 2026
• GameSpot: Grand Theft Auto III debuts at number three (NPD weekly chart, May 2002)
• CNN/Money: Vice City sales column, January 2003
• TechRadar: Analyst reports 89 percent of GTA 6 pre-orders are for the $100 Ultimate Edition