In a recent Scottish newspaper titled The Scotsman, it has been speculated that Grand Theft Auto V might have cost Rockstar upwards of $266 million or 170 million pounds to produce. The report claims that analysts believe the game is set to sell over 25 million copies in it’s first year; raking in over 1 billion dollars in sales for Rockstar.

Brian Baglow, who worked as a writer for the original Grand Theft Auto, offered intriguing insight into GTA’s global appeal. “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 Brian ­Baglow. “It’s coming up to 17 years since GTA began and it’s become something I don’t think anyone involved with the orginal game would have expected.“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.”

David Kushner, author of Jacked: The Outlaw Story Of Grand Theft Auto, further infuses credibility for the franchise: “I wouldn’t be surprised if it sets records. GTA IV ended up in Guinness World Records so I would certainly anticipate the new game will do just as well.”

It looks as though GTAV is tipped to be one of the, if not the most highest grossing video game of all time; topping any Call of Duty game.

In another intriguing interview Dan Houser, Rockstar Games co-founder, discussed with The Guardian the decision to include an all male cast and the massive research the team had to undergo in order to create GTAV. Houser believes that an all male cast was: “….so key to this story.” He then talks about their research. “Out and about, all night long with weird people, strange cops showing us around, a lot of first-hand research,” Houser said. “We spoke to FBI agents that have been undercover, experts in the Mafia, street gangsters who know the slang–we even went to see a proper prison. These poor buggers in the middle of the salt flat desert, miles away. It was eye-openingly depressing.”

GTAV is coming for the Xbox 360 and PS3 next week, on September 17. But I bet you already knew that.