God of War's Laufey collector box is $150 of merch with no game, and I'm side-eyeing GTA 6's $400 CE

Saw this GameSpot piece about God of War's Laufey collector's edition and it got me thinking about our $400 GTA 6 box. The Laufey set is purely merch. No disc, no digital code. You get an eight-inch statue of Faye, Phranque the Cube, and Rue fighting Begtse's soldiers. Phranque lights up if you plug it into USB. There's also a deck of 51 oracle cards and a mini art book, all in collector packaging. Price is $150, and if you want the actual game you're shelling out another $70 for a physical copy.

That's the part that bugs me. Sony has done collector's editions before that at least bundled a digital key. Now they're selling a box of stuff and telling you to buy the game separately. The article points out this isn't some weird one-off. It mentions Rockstar dropped a $400 GTA 6 collector's edition a few weeks back, and it comes with plenty of stuff. They don't spell out whether the GTA 6 box includes the game or not, but the fact it's being grouped with merch-only boxes makes me wonder.

I get the business logic. These boxes are aimed at superfans with cash to burn, and publishers save money by not printing an extra disc or generating a code. Higher margins, less supply chain headache. But $400 for a GTA 6 collector's edition that might not even have the game? That's a lot of faith in a statue and some art cards. I already pre-ordered the Ultimate Edition for $99.99, and I'm not about to double dip unless the physical extras are genuinely ridiculous.

Would you drop $400 on a GTA 6 collector's box if it didn't even come with the game, or is that a hard pass?

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Source: GameSpot · Curated content.