What the £350 Grand Theft Auto ‘collector’s box’ says about the escalating cost of gaming

The launch of a collector’s box hints at a new reality: the kinds of games I grew up with are becoming a luxury item, locked behind a forbidding spending barrier

As a parent (and partner) to a habitual collector, I do feel like an unwelcome portion of my life is occupied by an endless war against stuff. Surfaces in my home ceaselessly accumulate piles of random objects: a JoyCon wrist strap, a sticker sheet, an unidentifiable plastic piece of a toy or gizmo, an Xbox 360 controller with no batteries, cases for Switch cartridges lost down the side of the sofa … Stuff encroaches everywhere, especially in a gaming household. Much as I regret the imminent disappearance of physical games, I do not regret the extra space I have in my attic as a result of switching almost entirely to downloaded games over the last decade or so.

Speaking of the imminent disappearance of physical games: Rockstar recently announced a £350 ($400) “collector’s box” of Grand Theft Auto 6 goodies … that doesn’t include the game itself. Not even a download code. The Grand Theft Auto VI: The Goodtime State – Vice City Collection, to give it its full and unwieldy name, contains a hat, a bag, a pair of sunglasses, a figurine, a poster and more, including a mirror and a “swizzle spoon” that looks, unambigiously, like a cocaine spoon. The game retails at £70, so if you want something to play alongside all your stuff, you’re looking at an outlay of £420.

I’m not about to rag on this box of merch. People love this kind of stuff, and as a lifelong collector of Japanese gatcha and blind-box toys, I am in no position to judge how people spend their money. I have a few video game special editions that I cherish – the statue that came with my copy of The Last Guardian is still on my shelf – though I also have many more that are relegated to various cupboards. But it is unusual, however, for them to be this expensive. Usually with gaming special editions, we’re talking an extra £20-50 for a statue, or a steelbook, maybe a booklet and a keyring. 2009’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s “prestige edition” came with night vision goggles for $150. In 2015, Fallout 4’s $120 collector’s edition shipped with a plastic Pip Boy wrist unit (I had one; alas, it was flimsy and disappointing).

There have been some infamously expensive gaming special editions down the years, some of which were PR stunts (see Saints Row IV’s million-dollar pack, which included a Lamborghini and cosmetic surgery – nobody bought it). But in the 2020s high-priced video game merchandise has become more common, from a Balenciaga PlayStation tie-in line to £580 for Pokémon Lego.

What’s behind this is a troubling sense that video games as we once conceived of them – console games, played at home, perhaps on a nice 4K TV – have become a luxury item. People who can afford to spend up to £790 for a console and games are perhaps now people who can afford an extra £350 for a box of merch. Continual price-rises from Xbox and PlayStation suggest that video game companies do not seem particularly worried about pricing people out. Super-expensive merch and special editions like GTA 6’s form part of the same upward trend.

This stratification of the gaming world has been happening for years, ever since the first smartphones. The vast majority of the world’s players – about 80%, according to Newzoo – play for free, or at low cost, on mobile phones. The remaining 20% of players account for a disproportionate share of spending on the high-end gaming market on consoles and PC. With merch boxes like this, games companies are really going after that 20% for all they’ve got.

I’m saddened by the idea of gaming becoming even more of a luxury hobby. On the one hand, games in the broadest sense are more accessible than ever – you’re three taps away from playing Monopoly Go on a phone at any moment. But the kinds of games I grew up with and love to write about, games that feel like worlds rather than temporary diversions, are now increasingly locked behind a spending barrier. With the increasing scarcity of physical discs and cartridges, you can’t even reliably buy them second hand any more.

I guess there’s one advantage to the increasing cost of collector’s editions: the price has removed any lingering temptation to buy them. God knows I do not need more stuff.

What to play

Keith has been playing Silver Pines, a neo-noir detective drama with point-and-click adventure sensibilities. “As I played, I discovered countless references to 80s and 90s neo-noir culture – from Blue Velvet to Twin Peaks,” he writes in our review.

“It was a pleasure to explore every broken-down movie theatre, oily car garage and sweat-stinking interrogation room, collecting weird trinkets and working out how they’d all fit together – then exploring them again (and again) when the answers failed to show up. Silver Pines is a game to sit back and wallow in, like a private eye, kicking off his wingtip shoes and pulling that bottle of bourbon from the bottom drawer as rain trickles down the window and sodium street lights paint the walls a sickly shade of yellow.”

Available on: PC, PS5, Switch 2
Estimated playtime: 12 hours

What to read

• Award-winning UK studio Ninja Theory has reportedly begun laying off staff. The creator of Hellblade was one of the developers affected by Microsoft’s programme of lay-offs and studio closures in July, and according to Xbox COO Matt Booty two agreements to keep the studio running have failed. It is a sad end to one of the UK’s most interesting development houses.

• Meanwhile, Windows Central obtained the transcript to a recent in-house meeting held for Xbox staff by Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. In it, Sharma refers to the next generation Xbox platform currently known as Project Helix as “a family of devices” rather than a single console. “There is not one device that fits all,” she stated. “We will certainly have a great console first, but we also know that many players will be on the go.” Could the ROG Xbox Ally, launched in partnership with Asus last year, have just been a beta test for a fully fledged handheld Xbox?

• The news site GamesIndustry.Biz has an interesting feature on Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie and how it has affected the Resident Evil games. Although the film led to a modest uptick in sales, the real value of movie and TV tie-ins, according to industry analysts, is that they keep those franchises in the minds of gamers so that subsequent titles benefit from the exposure. As game development cycles continue to widen, it looks like we can expect a lot more movies and TV shows to fill in the gaps.

What to click

• From Super Bowl champ to master architect: Mike Tomlin’s sprawling Minecraft city is magnificent

• Gears of War: E-Day – an alien invasion shouldn’t be this boring | ★★★☆☆

Question Block

A question from my friend David via email:

“I keep hearing that game publishers are avoiding the whole of November because of GTA 6 – will there really be NO choice for those of us who don’t want to shoot stuff and run people over?”

Thankfully, it’s only the big western publishers who are staying clear of the GTA 6 launch window – lots of other developers are diving in regardless. Cozy strategy game Flame, Forest and Flood (try saying that three times) is launching on the same day as GTA, offering a delightful tactical alternative, set in a hex-based woodland idyl. Staying on a rural theme, the purposefully rage-inducing “precision platformer” Trees Hate You is a woodland hiking game, where you are attacked by nature. Alternatively, Football Manager 2027 is arriving on 10 November, so instead of leading a gang of drug dealers into a bloody turf war, you could lead Plymouth Argyle into the Premier League. I’m not sure which scenario is more challenging.

If you have a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us at pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.