I can prove that it makes sense for GTA VI to have a budget of 2 billion USD or higher

There have been rumors going around for a few years now that the budget of GTA VI is 2 billion USD. While many people have argued that the person who got that information misinterpreted the data, I am here to state that even if the person who leaked that information indeed did misinterpret the data, it does make sense for GTA VI to have a budget of 2 billion USD.

Here is why:

1. GTA IV took around 3.5 years to finish development and its total cost was 135 million USD with about 1000 developers working on it.

2. GTA V took around 5 years of development and had a budget of 265 million USD with 1000 developers working on it.

3. RDR 2 took around 8 years to develop and cost around 540 million USD with 1600 developers working on it.

Now GTA VI, will have been in development for 11 years with 2000-3000 developers working on it.

GTA VI has taken more than twice as long as GTA V to develop which we take as 265 x 2 = 530 million USD. GTA VI also has at least twice as many developers working on it as GTA V, let us assume a safe amount of 2.5 times the developers working on it, which puts us at 530 x 2.5 = 1.325 billion USD. GTA V released in 2013, so now we must account for inflation which is 35% ( The value of 1 dollar from 2013 is 1.35 dollars today ), which gives us 1.325 x 1.35 = 1.78875 billion USD total development cost. Which would fall within the 2 billion dollar budget expectations.

4. The most expensive game right now, Genshin Impact, cost 700+ million USD so far as per the wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop

GTA VI is obviously going to be more expensive than that.

In conclusion:

Development of GTA VI costing 2 billion USD ( 1.8 billion USD at least and 2+ billion at most but less than 3 billion no matter what ) makes perfect sense taking into account the amount of time GTA VI has been in development, rockstars habit of continually upping the budget, and the number of developers expected to be working on GTA VI.

GTA VI will be the most expensive game ever made and will easily be the biggest game of the next 1.5 decades, taking into account that based on current trends GTA VII will take 15 years to develop.

Exciting theory:

GTA VI online might be so big that it will crash fortnite and other similar live service games out there.