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PaperclipPerfector  15hr ago (text post)   709 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 26, 2026

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I’ve become a (possibly very bad) scalper.

Console prices are shooting up. Microsoft just increased the Series X/S’s price by like $150 across the board. Sony increased the PlayStation’s price by a similar amount recently.

There’s chatter that retailers are struggling to get stock for the anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI boom, which is going to sell a ton of consoles to people who never upgraded from last gen because they had no need to (I looked this up, and the *first current-gen-only Call of Duty is this year; the first current gen only EAFC game is also this year).

I had an Xbox for a while, but it broke, and I had a PS5 but it was lost / possibly stolen in an apartment move. GTA6 isn’t on PC, so I need one of them. So I went to a physical store about an hour ago with a minor (like 10%) discount on the window price for PS5s and I thought, on a whim, that I’d buy out the 4 other units and keep them all in a box until November, then sell them.

I will report back with my win or loss.

I can’t help but watch the conventional wisdom on GTA6 and shake my head.

  • GTA6 will sell more than any other game in history
  • Rockstar can charge whatever they want and people will pay it
  • There is the huge crowd of casuals who only play GTA and they’re all going to buy it
  • We won’t have enough PS5s to meet the demand
  • There are millions of people ready to spend $700 to play gta
  • The most hyped game off all time.

This reminds me of the 2016 “Hilary will win” crowd. People just repeating conventional wisdom and confusing that for analysis

In your case, it’s probably not a bad move given your points on COD and FC.

But as far as GTA goes, I fully expect it to not meet expectations for impact on gaming or sales. 13 years since its last release is more than enough for it to be out of the general zeitgeist. All of the original creators are long gone. Rockstar announced they’ve excised the juvenile and frat house humor. And it was in peak development during the years where developer trends were at their worst - and we are now fully seeing the ramifications of those trends.

I just don’t think it’s culturally relevant to anyone under 20 years old. I played my first Grand Theft Auto as a PC CD-ROM demo from PC Gamer (I think). I played the hell out of that game with WinAmp in the background and Sublime MP3s playing music. GTA3 was every bit of the revelation people say. And there was continuity for nearly 20 years between Grand Theft Auto and GTAV. 6 will just not hit that same way. For a lot of reasons.

Just my opinion though. I can’t wait to see what happens.

Anon, it’s already crossed 4 billion gross revenue from pre-orders alone.

I read this earlier and said, “hmm. Maybe I’m wrong”.

Then I got curious because I had not seen this news that pre order revenue was released. I looked into it. It looks like a bunch of people repeating information they heard in a big game of telephone. The original source is some dude posting info he found in an investment bank (piper sandler) research note that said something to the effect of “46 million pre sale units sold or $3bn rev would not be surprising.”

I’m not familiar with piper sander, but in not a banker (though I do work somewhat related to m&a). But I think it’s uncontroversial to say that these sort of research notes are mere an analysts informed speculation. And they’re usually motivated by something other than “reporting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”.

I remain skeptical.

FWIW, Kalshi is showing about 20% chance that Take Two announces more than 5 million preorders before July 4. There's the factor of the odds that Rockstar announces this before July 4 that's multiplied by the odds that they get that many preorders, so it's hard to figure out what the odds of the actual preorder count being that are. But I'd personally bet against it being 50 million as of today.

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