Misc
Animation: China’s Rapid Transit Boom (1990 – 2020)
After decades of hyper-growth and worsening pollution, China has fully embraced rapid transit as a way to keep cities moving. By 2020, China aims to have 7,000 km (4,300 mi.) of rapid transit lines, more than five times what exists in the U.S. today.
The following animation from Peter Dovak shows this rapid transit revolution playing out by year:
MIND THE GAP
In the above animation, there’s a distinct uptick in the number of projects started after 2004. It was in this year that the government lifted a ban on new metro construction, after worsening congestion and pollution caused the government to rethink their stance. There has been a rapid transit boom in the country ever since.
Soon, minimum population requirements for cities looking to build subway systems will be halved from 3 million to 1.5 million, and this move is expected to set off an even bigger wave of infrastructure investment in cities throughout the country.
RISING RATIOS
Hundreds of kilometers of track are being added each year. As a result of this unparalleled pace of metro construction, China’s ratio of Rapid Transit to Residents (RTR) has risen steeply over the last 15 years.
RTR is a ratio that compares the length of rapid transit lines (measured in kilometers) with the country’s urban population (measured in millions of people). As you can see, China is making great strides in building urban transit networks, though it is still catching up to countries like Germany, which has a RTR of 81.
Chinese cities have a blend of attributes that make constructing metro lines an appealing option: fewer regulatory hurdles, a low cost of labor, and a high-density urban fabric. Also, because transit is treated as an essential public service (i.e. not expected to be profitable), China’s metros provide affordable mobility to its citizens. Even with Beijing’s recent metro fare increase, most rides only cost about ¥3 to ¥8, or $0.45 to $1.45.
Shanghai is now home to the longest metro system by route length, and the Beijing Subway has the highest ridership in the world. Not bad for cities that lacked any substantive transit system until the 1990s.
By 2020, China is expected to have 220+ cities with over a million inhabitants, so as long as the government can continue to provide the resources and funding to expanding transit networks, the building boom will likely continue unabated.
Gaming
Charting Grand Theft Auto: GTA’s Budget and Revenues
Dive into the GTA budget through the years, with GTA VI set to be the most expensive video game of all time.
Charting Grand Theft Auto: GTA’s Budget and Revenues
Over 10 years since the launch of Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V), the second most-sold video game in history, Rockstar Games has announced its sequel GTA VI will be “coming 2025.”
As the anticipation only grows for this next big entry in the franchise, we take a look at the GTA budget through the years. How much have the last two games cost to make, how much have they earned, and how do they compare with the latest entry?
Data for this visualization comes from Statista, TweakTown, and Twitch Metrics.
How Much Has GTA VI Cost to Make?
The GTA franchise has grown enormously in scale from humble beginnings as a top-down, 2D video game in 1997. Fifteen installments later, the upcoming release, GTA VI, is estimated to be the most expensive video game to be made yet.
Here’s a look at how much GTA VI and the last two major releases cost, and how much revenue they’ve earned as of August 2023.
| Year | Title | Production Costs ($) | Revenue ($) | Copies Sold |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 (est.) | GTA VI | $2B (rumored) | N/A | N/A |
| 2013 | GTA V | $265M | $7.7B | 185M |
| 2008 | GTA IV | $100M | $2B | 25M |
In 2008, GTA IV cost around $100 million—already a budget that rivalled big Hollywood releases. However with 25 million copies sold, the game earned nearly $2 billion—a five-fold return on its production cost.
Five years later, GTA V (2013) cost more than $200 million to make—twice GTA IV’s budget. A decade after its release, GTA V has generated close to $8 billion, with hundreds of millions in annual revenue from subscriptions and in-game purchases—a model that its successor is sure to follow.
In fact, subscription fees and in-game purchases represented 78% of Take-Two Interactive’s (parent of GTA developer Rockstar Games) revenues in 2023.
Analysts estimate the to-be-released GTA VI’s costs at $2 billion, including marketing and other expenses. A massive open-world (set in the Miami-inspired “Vice City”), cutting edge graphics, and a reportedly brand-new game engine are all reasons for the game’s outsized budget.
For comparison, the current most expensive games to have been made include Red Dead Redemption 2 (also by Rockstar) and Star Citizen, both reportedly with a $500 million budget.
Meanwhile, Take-Two Interactive shares are up more than 50% for the year.
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