Two Annual Sports Games Just Made GTA 6 Look Like a Bargain

Two annual sports games announced their pricing this month, and both landed on a top tier of $149.99. 2K Sports' NBA 2K27 arrives September 4 with an Ultra Edition at $149.99, and Electronic Arts' EA Sports FC 27 arrives September 25 with an Ultimate Plus Edition at, you guessed it, $149.99.

We say this because this pretty much means that the most expensive edition of Grand Theft Auto VI, the one generating much discussion for costing $99.99, is now one of the cheapest premium editions of some of the biggest releases of the autumn.

Unfortunately, while this does make the next Grand Theft Auto look cheaper in comparison, this doesn't necessarily mean good news for anybody.

Take-Two Interactive owns Rockstar Games, which makes GTA VI, and it owns 2K, which publishes NBA 2K27. So "look how much worse the sports games are" does not exonerate anybody, because half of that comparison is the same corporate parent. It is one company running two pricing experiments on two different audiences in the same financial year, roughly eleven weeks apart.

Take-Two charging ten dollars less for its annual sports title than for its blockbuster, in the same year, and Electronic Arts doing the same, also suggests $79.99 isn't the new industry standard just yet. If it were, 2K Sports would have charged $79.99 for NBA 2K27 as well. It is not. Neither is Electronic Arts. Both held their annual releases at $70 while GTA 6 went to $80.

This tells us what the GTA 6 price actually is based on: demand. Take-Two charges $79.99 for GTA 6 because it knows people will pay for it, and it charges $69.99 for NBA 2K27 for the same reason.

The EA Sports FC 27 Ultimate Plus Edition gives you 10,000 FC Points, but not all at once. They arrive in five monthly drops, and there are deadlines attached. Miss the redemption window, and you forfeit points you have already paid for. Nothing in the GTA 6 Ultimate Edition works that way. The $20 you paid for shops, vehicles and hideout perks gets you them as you progress through gameplay.

Make no mistake. Rockstar doesn't get a free pass just because GTA 6 is looking cheaper in comparison. Plenty of premium editions across the industry include future expansions or downloadable content, with actual physical memorabilia to boot. GTA 6 still doesn't. What you are paying extra for is content that exists inside the game at launch and is simply gated behind the higher tier.

Neither $149.99 tier is the better deal just because it contains more items either. Most of that money is in-game currency, Virtual Currency in one case and FC Points in the other, and both power progression systems that the games deliberately make slow. In practical terms, you are paying real money to skip a grind engineered to sell you the shortcut. Buying a cosmetic hat is a transaction. Buying your way past a system designed to frustrate you is something else.

With that said, players, journalists, and consumer advocates have long condemned NBA 2K and the EA Sports FC series over exactly this model.

Perhaps the only saving grace here is that Grand Theft Auto V launched in 2013, and people are still playing it in 2026. If GTA 6 has anything like that lifespan, and it most likely will, a $79.99 purchase works out to a handful of dollars per year. An annual sports title asks for seventy dollars again every autumn, and last year's version becomes a dead product the moment the new one ships. Judged on cost per year of use, they are not remotely comparable.

To make matters worse, the NBA 2K27 Ultra Edition is described as limited availability, gone after September 6. The EA Sports FC 27 Ultimate Plus Edition is also available only until August 31. Much like with GTA 6, the more expensive tiers are digital products. There is no warehouse, no print run, nothing that can physically run out. They rely entirely on scarcity for a quick cash grab, and the fact that two competing publishers are doing the same thing all but confirms that this type of tactic works.

So take the comparison for what it genuinely is. GTA 6 is a bargain, and it holds its value over a decade. Unfortunately, this feeling is also because it's the by-product of very patient work by people who sell football cards.

GTA 6 launches November 19, and you can see the full breakdown of every edition and what it costs in your region if you are still deciding.