Apparently, Japan has one of the “cheapest” prices for the game while elsewhere it becomes a rip off for some reason (as referenced, in green: is converted from JPY while in red: is the price of the same thing in USA, Europe, UK, Australia, Brazil & Poland to name a few places).
The thing with pricing is that different countries have their own rules on taxes, so it’s kind of finicky to compare (as US has sales tax added upon checkout while EU includes VAT). The weird part is that both $ and € use the same numerical figures despite them being different currencies, as in 80€ is treated the same as $80 when the conversion does not match at all when you look it up.

Reminder to everyone that GTAVI costs $100, and you get some of it disabled in the $80 version
I’m not gonna buy either because fuck rockstar, but let’s be honest. The game is 80. The other 20 is just for some cosmetics.
Good answer, fuck rockstar
Idk if I would call missions and characters on a single-player game “cosmetic”
“Track down a variety of abandoned classic and work-in-progress project cars and revitalise them to their former glory in this special commission from eccentric collector and local fixer, Wyman. Restore these and make them your own, including four vehicles that are only available in the Ultimate Edition.”
So you get 4 extra cars in ultimate. I’d hardly call those missions, but meh.
The rest is just other vehicles, skins, tattoos, etc.
Also "PTT Youngin$ Compound and Scores
One of Leonida’s loudest and most socially active gangs, the PTT Youngin$ grow premium hydroponics in places you’d least expect. Find a way to raid the PTT Youngin$ Illegal Goods Store in Southside Vice City and escape safely to score some special items and distinct contraband. "
Sort of sounds like a mission as well, but in the style of those "? " on the map in open world games that take 5 mins at max.
From what I understand, it provides access to a handful of shops in game. This is where you get the clothes/tattoos/etc. The shops are present in the $80 version, but you can only access them after paying extra. I would absolutely call that locking content behind a paywall.
You go in once, you spend a minute to pick your fav hairstyle (which might not even be one of the exclusive ones) and then you never go in again. You do you, but I personally don’t consider that content. It doesn’t really change the experience of the game.
Even if we do consider it content for the sake of the argument, it’s what… an hour of content? That’s still silly to get upset over when you pay an extra 25% for it.
100 hours of content for 80€ vs 101 hours of content for 100€.
But that’s just it, why the hell did it become okay to rip out an hour of content from a game and sell it for a quarter of the price on top of the game? It doesn’t really matter if its small or large, it’s scummy as hell. I’m not gonna make any excuses for it. Shit like that, among all the other terrible shit about Rockstar, is why I will not be buying this game.
Fair enough. But I do wonder. If they only had the standard version for sale and then 3-6 months later they’d put all the ultimate edition stuff for sale as a dlc, would you still call it scummy?
Look as someone who’s partial to playing the devils avocado myself, I get where you’re coming from.
That said, this is just horse armour dlc tier. I’ll never understand people defending companies doing this shit. R* is already going to milk 6, probably to the tune of a billion plus dollars, again. Do they seriously have to nickel and dime like this? In an ideal fantasy land, they wouldn’t even charge a cent for SP DLC because they know they’ll sell currency and content for the MP and make an absolute killing.
Let’s not forget, how much DLC content was released for SP on GTA 5?
Like “thanks for buying our C suite several mansions and yachts each and earning our investors a fortune last game. Want some tattoos and cars, that could be modded into any other game? Pay up. Anyway gotta go bust up another employee union, cya.”
Tap for spoiler
To answer your question, yes, if they had it ready to go on release and withheld it. Your question is also semi paradoxical. Cutting content from the game for day 0 dlc is done for profiteering. Why wait months in a vain attempt at hiding it? Also it’d be pretty obvious because they can’t sprout the locations up out of nowhere, so they’d have to block these areas off. Nerds also always datamine files for nearly every game. It’d discovered immediately so they’d still cop shit for it but now lose the FOMO incentive to purchase it that they’re angling for.
Or, alternatively, it’s $80, but they’ll let you plus it up with some bullshit that doesn’t matter for $20.
Idk if I would call missions and characters on a single-player game “some bullshit that doesn’t matter”
Oh, you’ve never seen the throwaway bonus missions on a game SKU before? Truthfully, no one knows but Rockstar how substantive that extra stuff is. But my gut and past experience tells me that if it was actually worth seeing, they wouldn’t have padded out the list with a bunch of variations on guns and cars, of which there will be many even in the base game, because it’s Grand Theft Auto. The missions that we know about, which you have to read on one or two select pages but they’re not present on others, is some kind of mission around collecting cars for some fence; I’m not losing sleep over not having that and keeping an extra $20 in my pocket.
Tell yourself whatever you like, but it’s kind of sad that after learning that it’s not what you thought it was, you’ve doubled down
I knew what it was before we had this conversation.
Oops, I thought you read what you’ve been writing. Won’t happen again