Whatever Take-Two and Rockstar Games poured into Grand Theft Auto V's formula seems to be working miracles. There are entire franchises that would kill for the chance to reach half of what GTA 5 has managed to do in little over 10 years. Let alone sell over 195 million units as a single title.
Take-Two, also known as Rockstar's owner, has recently published its new sales figures, which came as no surprise to no one but shocked everyone at the same time.
The last time we heard about how well Grand Theft Auto V was doing was a few months ago when it hit the 185 million mark. Well... as of December 2023, the behemoth managed to move yet another 10 million units like it was nothing.
The Grand Theft Auto VI trailer from December 5 might had something to do with the overall hype for the game. The short 1-minute 30-second video broke a major record: YouTube's most views (93 million) in the first 24 hours for a non-music launch.
Now it's sitting at 174,230,787 hits, making it the second most viewed video game trailer ever. The number one spot is currently occupied by Subway Surfers, with 361,548,700 views from September 2012. We'll check in again in another 12 years to see where the GTA 6 sits.
For those not following the gaming industry and how much a AAA game ($300+ million budget) typically sells, 10 million copies in a few months after 10 years is unfathomable. It's part of a select few that can pull this off this late in their never-ending lifecycle, like Minecraft (2011) with over 300 million and the Tetris franchise with over 520 million. We can discount the latter because it has a billion versions.
Photo: Rockstar Games on YouTube
As for the rest of the AAA titles, they can count their lucky stars if they pass 10 million units during their lifetime, let alone almost 20 times that. The even more exciting part of that report was that we also know that the entire GTA franchise has sold over 420 million units. The words "successful, iconic, and critically acclaimed" don't do justice to the brand.
According to Take-Two, GTA V has been the best-selling title in the United States for the past 10 years based on unit and dollar sales.
Red Dead Redemption 2 isn't doing all that bad either, selling over 61 million units. The entire RDR franchise is "just" at 86 million. Based on the same criteria as GTA V, the report mentioned that this franchise has been the 2nd best-selling title in the US in the past 6 years.
Funnily enough, they even mention Midnight Club Los Angeles as having created the open-city street racing genre. Even poor ol' Max Payne 3 gets a shoutout as "Rockstar Games' most technologically sophisticated and cinematic action-shooter to date."
There are a ton of unique insights in this report. If you're a gaming industry enthusiast, you shouldn't shy away from devouring every page.
Codrin just loves American classics, from the 1940s and ‘50s, all the way to the muscle cars of the '60s and '70s. In his perfect world, we'll still see Hudsons and Road Runners roaming the streets for years to come (even in EV form, if that's what it takes to keep the aesthetic alive). Full profile
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