What GTA 6 Really Costs on Day One: We Priced It in 10 Countries

A copy of Grand Theft Auto VI costs $79.99 in the US. But the game will not run on a PS4 or an Xbox One at all: it comes out on Nov. 19, 2026, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S only, according to Rockstar Games. Anyone still on an older console has to buy a new one too, and that is the bigger part of the bill.

So we priced the full launch-day bill, console plus game, in 10 countries, using only the official PlayStation and Xbox stores.

The short version: Japan is the cheapest place to start, at about $409. Spain and Italy are the most expensive, at about $762. And in most of the countries we checked, the cheapest way in is an Xbox Series S.

The launch-day bill in 10 countries

Each total below is the cheapest console sold on the maker’s own store that can run the game, plus GTA VI Standard Edition. The last column compares that total with an average month’s pay in the same country.

Prices checked Oct. 9–10, 2026, on the PlayStation Store, PlayStation Direct and Sony country stores, and xbox.com. US and Canadian prices are before sales tax. Currency conversion uses the European Central Bank reference rates of Oct. 9, 2026. Wage shares use OECD average annual wages for 2025, divided by 12; the OECD has no figure for India.

Why the Xbox Series S keeps winning

The console decides most of the bill, and in most markets the Series S is the cheaper machine. Wherever both consoles had an official price, the Xbox route came out ahead of the PS5 Digital Edition route, with one exception.

The savings are real money: $100 in the US, £90 in the UK, €100 in Germany and France, and A$220.95 in Australia.

Japan breaks the pattern

The exception is Japan. Sony sells a Japanese-language-only PS5 Digital Edition there for ¥55,000. That undercuts the ¥82,480 Xbox Series S by ¥27,480, and it is the reason Japan sits at the top of the list.

Why Spain, Italy and India look so expensive

Part of the answer is stock. In those three countries, Microsoft’s own store showed no price for the Series S. The pages listed it as sold out or pointed buyers to retailers, which left the pricier PS5 as the only official route.

The difference is large. If Spain and Italy matched the €499.99 Series S price in Germany and France, their totals would drop to €579.98.

The game itself: from $62 to $93

GTA VI Standard Edition costs the same on the PlayStation Store and the Xbox Store in every country we checked except Mexico, where the PlayStation Store appears to show a pre-tax price. Converted to dollars, though, the same game ranges from about $62 in Japan and India to about $93 in the UK.

The Ultimate Edition costs $20 more in the US, €20 more in the euro countries and £20 more in the UK. In the US, the two editions are listed at $79.99 and $99.99 on the PlayStation Store and the Xbox Store.

Mexico needs a footnote. Its PlayStation Store shows MX$1,292.24, which is exactly MX$1,499 divided by 1.16. That suggests the figure leaves out Mexico’s 16% sales tax, so we used the Xbox Store price instead.

What it costs against a month’s pay

Dollar prices only tell half the story. Measured against average pay, launch day is easiest on the wallet in the US, where the bundle equals 8.0% of an average monthly wage, and in Australia, at 9.4%. In Spain and Italy, it takes more than 23%. That is a gap of about three times.

Japan shows why the comparison matters. Its $409 bundle is the cheapest in dollars, yet it still equals 15.0% of an average month’s pay, nearly twice the US share.

How we priced it

• Game prices come from each country’s PlayStation Store and Xbox Store listing for GTA VI. None showed a discount.
• Console prices come from PlayStation Direct (US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy), Sony’s own stores in India, Japan and Australia, and xbox.com country pages. India’s PS5 models were listed at their official price but shown as out of stock. In the US we used Sony’s official recommended price of $599.99 for the PS5 Digital Edition; PlayStation Direct currently lists it at $599.
• Left out of the main table: Mexico, Brazil, Poland, Turkey and South Korea, where neither Sony nor Microsoft showed a console price on its own store. Their game prices are in the second table.
• Not included: sales tax in the US and Canada, retailer discounts, refurbished consoles and bundles.

These are list prices on the day we checked, and they can change before launch. If you are still on a PS4, our guide on upgrading from PS4 to PS5 before GTA 6 covers trade-ins and moving your saves. Our October and November release calendar lists everything else launching around it.

This analysis may be republished with credit and a link to Game Empress.

Featured image: Chart of the day-one cost of GTA 6 in 10 countries. Chart: Game Empress