GTA 6 creators looking to AI for help otherwise ‘expensive’ video games ‘can’t get made’

GTA 6 is estimated to be the most expensive entertainment product in history, with total development and marketing costs projected to be over $1 billion

The makers of Grand Theft Auto 6 are looking to AI to reduce the cost of developing video games.

GTA 6 is estimated to be the most expensive entertainment product in history, with total development and marketing costs projected between $1 billion and $1.5 billion by its 2026 release.

Its maker, Take-Two, said giant investments only make sense for “massive blockbusters,” and “that’s super hard to do.”

As a result, the firm is now “exploring” if AI could “help us get there” in terms of reducing the budgets for titles not quite as massive as the guns and gangsters franchise.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said: “We certainly can’t deal with exponential growth – we probably can’t even deal with linear growth – in production costs.

“So everyone puts pressure on everyone, ourselves included.

“But on balance, we want to make bigger hits, and we’re prepared to take appropriate risks to do so.”

GTA is Take-Two’s biggest franchise, but the company has other big-name brands like BioShock and Borderlands.

Zelnick said “there really is” a ceiling in terms of how much those brands could grow if costs don’t come down.

“It really means that we’re going to have to be smarter about how we do things or certain titles can’t get made,” he told Bloomberg.

“Certainly, our bet is not going to be to give consumers less. Our bet is not going to be make games lighter, shorter, worse.

“I’m hopeful that we can create more efficiencies with technology. We’ll see.”

Zelnick said GTA 6 was an “expensive” game to make, though Take-Two has not offered any specifics about the game’s budget.

He said his ambition is to give developers “unlimited” financial and creative resources by utilising new tools like artificial intelligence.

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.