This article was originally published on July 3, 2026 - read the full issue

By Rob Fahey

It's not hyperbole to say that GTAVI will be the biggest videogame launch of this decade. It's probably not even hyperbole to say that it will be the biggest entertainment launch of any kind in this decade, in terms of raw sales figures if not broad cultural impact.

A commercial event of this scale ends up wielding an influence that goes far beyond the fortunes of its publisher. We've already seen how other major releases are tripping over each other in their haste to evacuate the weeks around GTA's launch date. Its performance will also become a bellwether for the entire industry; if GTA stumbles and misses its sky-high projections in any way, it will likely trigger a slump in investment and funding across the board.

For better or worse, GTA will also set trends for years to come. Its pricing – $80 for the standard edition, $100 for the 'ultimate' edition – will be raised as an argument for higher price points in many boardrooms. Last week, it transpired that Rockstar has made another decision that will set a trend for the rest of the industry: GTAVI will be a download-only game, totally eschewing any physical media release at its launch.

Physical-schmizical

The game will have physical boxes to be sold at retail – presumably something of a sop to major retailers that would otherwise be completely cut out of the launch – but these units will only contain a download code for PlayStation or Xbox stores. 

It's more accurate to say that Rockstar is out in front of a trend here, rather than setting it directly, since the writing has been on the wall for physical media for some time. It's always seemed likely that this generation of consoles would be the last to sport disc drives – speculation which Sony effectively confirmed this week by announcing that it would shut down production of physical discs for any new games that launch after January 2028. 

Naturally, there are some cost savings for publishers and platform holders committing to digital in this way, but the real motivation has more to do with pricing control. Putting discs out in the world allows people to exercise all manner of inconvenient consumer rights, such as lending their games to friends or selling them second-hand. It also puts game RRPs at the mercy of a whole assortment of retailers who may undercut digital pricing.

For Rockstar, the case for going digital is obvious. GTAVI is launching as a single-player game, which naturally creates a more active second-hand market than if it had a major online component. It's also launching exclusively on consoles, with no PC version yet announced, meaning that ultimate pricing control will now rest entirely with Rockstar and the two platform holders.

This approach – which will be the default for PlayStation after January 2028 – goes even further than Nintendo's game-key cards for Switch titles. Those cards – cartridges containing just a secure key for Nintendo's online store – also require a download of the entire game to work. Many consumers find that frustrating, but the cards do function like physical games otherwise. You can lend, borrow and resell them. No such accommodation exists for digital games on Sony's platform.

Many consumers won't even notice the change, of course. Digital sales have been steadily overshadowing physical retail sales for years. The platform holders have seemingly decided that the physical media holdouts (both among consumers and in the dwindling physical retail sector) are now a small enough minority that they can simply be told to deal with it.

Even if consumers don't notice the change, though, this is more than just a shift in the means of distribution. Sony itself proved the difference rather starkly last month, when it told people who had bought certain movies on the PlayStation Store that they would no longer have access to them due to the expiration of a licensing deal. It's a timely reminder that, in an all-digital world, 'bought' no longer means what the dictionary says it does. While that unilateral removal of purchased content from users' libraries was movies, it would be naïve to imagine that a similar thing won't happen to games, especially to older releases, whose legal status can be complicated, for example, by the expiration of music licences or the transference of IP rights. None of that matters to a disc on your shelf, but it matters a great deal if your 'ownership' is just a line in a corporation's database.

PC behaviour 

PC owners, of course, might wonder what all the fuss is about. The PC has essentially been a digital-only platform for almost two decades. The situation here, however, is genuinely different. Steam may be the dominant platform, but it's not the only storefront you can use. There's real competition between different digital distribution systems and using a different one is as easy as opening a different app. It's a stark contrast to console platforms, where the platform holder's pricing power is absolute. And, in future, it won't even face the external pressure from second-hand sales or physical retail prices being marked down.

It's the same situation that legislators, especially in the EU, have lately viewed very dimly on smartphones. Consoles have largely escaped their interest thus far, but GTAVI's launch this year is going to be a glimpse into a near future in which the 'monopoly' word is going to be bandied about liberally regarding console software sales channels. It seems unlikely that paper slips in plastic boxes will be enough of a fig leaf to fend off the beady eye of authorities in Brussels and elsewhere for long. After the many political controversies of GTA's past, it's perhaps apt that its launch may be an opening move in a looming showdown between platform holders and regulators.

This article was originally published on July 3, 2026 - read the full issue