GTA 6 could earn half of GTA 5’s lifetime sales in one week predicts analyst

GTA 6 did not make $1 billion in pre-orders, suggests a new analyst report, but their predictions for its first week sales are even more outrageous.

Even though GTA 6 is widely touted as the most anticipated video game ever, it’s still a shock when data is shared demonstrating just how successful it’s expected to be.

A week after pre-orders went live, it was claimed that GTA 6 made $1 billion in just one hour, presumably based on both digital and physical pre-orders… even though physical copies only include a digital code and no actual disc.

That statistic has been refuted by a newer report, but its projected figures for GTA 6 are still obscenely high, with the game expected to generate upwards of $5.2 billion (about £3.8 billion) in sales by the end its launch week.

According to video game market data firm Newzoo, the aforementioned $1 billion in pre-orders claim is ‘absurd’ and, instead, GTA 6 is said to have made only $180 million (£133 million) in the final week of June, after pre-orders went live on June 25.

This accounts for digital pre-order spend across the US as well as the ‘five largest European markets’ – the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Considering it’s a long-awaited sequel in a very popular franchise, and the follow-up to the massive money maker that is GTA 5, even Newzoo’s most conservative projections place GTA 6’s first week sales figures at $3.25 billion (£2.4 billion).

Even when lowballing GTA 6’s launch performance, this would make the game’s pre-order campaign the largest in recorded history.

As a reminder, GTA 5 made $1 billion in its first three days and is said to have made nearly $10 billion in its lifetime. And now there’s data to suggest GTA 6 could make roughly a third, if not half of that in a week.

This data goes to show that for all the online brouhaha over the lack of a true physical release, and Rockstar’s almost non-existent marketing (with still no sign of a dedicated gameplay trailer), most people don’t care and are already guaranteed to grab GTA 6 at launch.

There’s also the matter of the inevitable online multiplayer mode. Rockstar has not formally announced such a mode for GTA 6, but it has been rumoured and is a safe bet regardless, considering GTA Online has been a persistent source of revenue for the studio.

Given the clear high demand for GTA 6, it’s no wonder most publishers are keen to give the month of November a wide berth, which is why September and October have become so crowded with significant new releases.

There are some exceptions. Atari has chosen November to release a remaster of an old Godzilla fighting game as well as a collection of retro Barbie games, while Sega plans to drop its Switch 2 port of Metaphor: ReFantazio.

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