Rockstar’s western epic had an unexpected resurgence over the past year, as a PS5 and Xbox Series X update looks inevitable.
Minecraft and GTA 5 might be the biggest-selling video games of all-time, but there’s been a significant shift in the battle for third place.
As outlined in Take-Two’s latest financial report for Q4 2026, by CEO Strauss Zelnick, Red Dead Redemption 2 had its ‘highest level of annual unit sales since its launch year’ over the 2026 fiscal year, with over 85 million units sold to date.
This means the western epic has shot ahead of Wii Sports and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as the third best-selling game of all time. The latter two titles have sold 82.9 million and 79.54 million copies, respectively.
It’s highly unlikely Red Dead Redemption 2 will ever catch up to GTA 5, which sits at 230 million copies sold worldwide, but it’s an impressive number regardless – especially as it continues to sell eight years after it originally launched on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Speaking about the game’s success, Zelnick said titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA Online ‘have proven to be vastly more resilient than anyone expected, and I think that’s a quality of the work that Rockstar has done’.
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While it already felt likely, the rumours of a current gen update for the sequel now seem inevitable. Take-Two has said it plans to launch one ‘platform extension’ in the current fiscal year, which could well be the long rumoured port.
This also makes a sequel to Red Dead Redemption 2 even more likely. The voice actor for Arthur Morgan, Roger Clark, has previously said it would be ‘crazy not to do another one’, although Rockstar has not officially announced anything.
It’s unclear why Red Dead Redemption 2 has seen a surge in sales over the past year, but Red Dead Online did receive an update in 2025 that added several new missions and zombies. It’s also consistently discounted in Steam and PlayStation Store sales.
While Take-Two has doubled down on GTA 6’s launch date of November 19, the company’s stock dropped by over 4% after the earnings call. According to analysts, this was due to Take-Two’s conservative outlook for the 2027 fiscal year.
The company forecast earnings between $8 billion and $8.2 billion (£6 billion) for the year ending March 2027, which was reportedly below Wall Street expectations of $9.13 billion (£6.76 billion).
That’s a common tactic for video game publishers (especially the likes of Nintendo) who like to lowball their predictions, so it looks even better when they exceed them.
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