'GTA 5' Costs $265 Million To Develop And Market, Making 'Grand Theft Auto V' The Most Expensive Video Game Ever Produced

"Grand Theft Auto V" is the most expensive video game ever produced! The GTA 5 team at Rockstar works on an astonishing budget of $265 million for both development and marketing. The enormous GTA 5 budget supersedes even the largest video game budgets, before GTA 5's record breaking budget, the most expensive video game produced was "Star Wars: The Old Republic," with a budget of $200 million.

And despite "Star Wars" high budget, comparatively the next video game on the list of most expensive video games ever produced include "Grand Theft Auto 4," "Disney Infinity" and "Red Dead Redemption," which had a $100 million budget each. The huge budget of GTA 5 is instead in line with Hollywood blockbuster budgets, surpassing the $237 million budget of James Cameron's "Avatar" and only slightly trailing behind Disney's $260 million budget for the Pixar animated film, "Tangled."

GTA V is set for release on September 17, it is the first main entry in the GTA series since "Grand Theft Auto IV" was released in 2008. The game is highly anticipated amongst the gaming community due to its scheduled release as one of the last titles to release exclusively during the seventh generation of home gaming consoles.

Because of this groin anticipation, the huge budgetary investment will pay off; The Scotsman reports that GTA V is s likely to sell 25 million copies in its first year alone, generating sales of 1.57 billion. Another financial boost came as shares in Rockstar Games have doubled in the past year. "By any sort of commercial scale, Grand Theft Auto is easily Scotland's largest cultural export ever. The series has sold something like 135 million copies so far," said Scottish Games Network's Brian Baglow to The Scotsman.

Banglow also stated, "The series has come on not just in leaps and bounds, but in long jumps since then. It's become far more than the sum of its parts, it's a fully global phenomenon. This is the fifth major release, and the nice thing is that all of them have been made here in Scotland." The franchise has always been developed and created in Scotland despite GTA"s lead writers and producers Dan and Sam Houser being born in London. Rockstar North is the development studio responsible for GTA; they are a British video game developer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. However the development company started in Dundee, Scotland as DMA Designs, with their most notable games being Lemmings and Unirally.

RELATED:

'GTA 5' Release Date News: Characters To Be Voiced By Real-Life Gang Members!

'GTA 5' Release Date Platforms? PC, Wii U And PS4 Rumor Roundup

Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo President, Unimpressed With PS4 And Xbox One Launch Line-Ups