The industry is bracing for the meteoric impact of the biggest game of all time, Grand Theft Auto 6, arriving this fall. Now, analyst firm Newzoo is forecasting that the game will have the biggest consumer product launch by a wide margin, talking billions, not hundreds of millions.
Newzoo’s tracking estimates that GTA 6 has already generated as much as $260 million in preorders worldwide, five months before its release. Then, you extrapolate how preorder behavior translates into actual earnings at launch:
“What the data actually shows is $180 million in digital pre-order spend across the US and the five largest European markets in the final week of June, translating to a global opening week of roughly $260 million, with most of the ramp still ahead.”
“Run that figure through the plausible band of preorder curves, and GTA VI is on track to book between $3.25 billion and $5.2 billion in week-one launch revenue.”
Is this remotely possible? Could GTA 6 really hit numbers at that scale? Well, looking to the past, it does seem plausible. We have data from GTA 5 to compare to:
- GTA 5 made $800 million in its first 24 hours.
- GTA 5 made $1 billion in 3 days.
- GTA 5 then made $1.15 billion in its first 5 days (16 million units).
So, triple that, at minimum? Seems unreasonable. But not quite:
- If we want to adjust for inflation, $1.15 billion is $1.58 billion today.
- The base edition of GTA 5 sold for $60. In 2026, GTA 6 will sell for $80, $10 above the industry standard of $70, pushing earnings further. Though inflation works the other way here, as $60 in 2013 is $86.50 today. But that said, it’s not way behind as it would be if the price hadn’t changed.
- Then, demand. GTA 5 is the biggest-selling premium game of all time, with 230 million copies sold. There is every indication that GTA 6 will have higher demand, perhaps much higher, than GTA 5 at launch, given the blowout success of that game (the next closest game in lifetime sales is Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 with “just” 85 million copies). Fans have been waiting 13 years for a sequel to the biggest game of all time by orders of magnitude. Imagining launch week sales could be at least double is not out of the question, or it could go even higher.
So, while almost absurd to consider, consumers, and really the entire entertainment industry, might not fully comprehend what’s coming. We’ll find out in 5 months at GTA 6’s launch.
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