There’s just over a week left before Grand Theft Auto 6‘s launch, and by all accounts it sounds like it’s going to be massive. It feels like GTA 6 is everywhere, and early reports have suggested that the $100 digital deluxe edition is outselling even the $80 regular version. Even the CEO of Rockstar owner Take-Two is saying he’s surprised by how well the game is selling already, claiming in the company’s quarterly earnings that its pre-orders are “tracking far above our initial expectations.”
Pre-order incentives have been plentiful in recent weeks, with Walmart offering a “surprise” of some sort, and a lot of free bonus content bundled in no matter where you buy it. Digital pre-loads begin tomorrow, but physical pre-orders are a code in a box, so you won’t be able to redeem it until the day of. Physical discs won’t be available at launch.
What’s more bonkers to me than a nebulous “exceeded expectations” on pre-orders is that GTA 5 is still selling roughly five million copies per quarter, reaching nearly 235 million copies sold in the last few months. I’ve been watching Take-Two’s earnings for years now, and I don’t think I can remember a time when GTA 5 wasn’t selling at least five million per quarter. But if there were a time for it to drop off, I’d say now would be it, given that a brand new game is coming out imminently. And yet! The franchise overall has sold nearly 480 million units.
Overall, it wasn’t a great quarter for Take-Two, with net bookings down 18 percent year-over-year and net revenue down as well. Take-Two is reiterating its guidance for the year, though, of net bookings of $8 to $8.2 billion: an absolutely bonkers amount of money that can only be explained by a new GTA (net bookings were $6.72 billion last year, and $5.56 billion the year prior).
GTA 6 is, curiously, the only upcoming game in Take-Two’s pipeline that has a firm release date at the moment. 2K is preparing its slate of sports titles for next year, and Project ETHOS, BioShock, and Judas are all still in limbo. For now, everything (quite understandably) hangs on GTA 6.
