- This is reported by the market research company Newzoo Grand Theft Auto 6 has “the strongest pre-order campaign ever recorded”
- The game earned around $180 million in digital pre-order sales across the US and the five largest European markets during the last week of June
- It is estimated GTA 6 will achieve $3.3 – $5.2 billion in cumulative global sales by the end of the launch week
Grand Theft Auto 6 has reportedly achieved the strongest pre-order period ever and is on track to gross over $5 billion by the end of its launch week.
That’s according to video game market research firm Newzoo, which released a new analysis reporting that the upcoming Rockstar title earned around $180 million in digital pre-order sales across the US and the five largest European markets during the last week of June.
These markets represent 69% of lifetime console gamers GTA 5which Newzoo used as a guide to estimate that the total global spend was around $260 million in the first week of pre-orders, concluding that this “kicks off the strongest pre-order campaign on record.”
“It is a huge amount of money with big implications for how GTA 6‘s total sales should be predicted,” the company said. “Positioned on the sales curve GTA 6 likely to follow, putting it on pace for $3.3 – $5.2 billion in cumulative global sales by the end of its launch week.”
The report states that popular titles, such as Cyberpunk 2077 and GTA 6follow three sales curves: the “brand new IP,” the “successor with performance uncertainty,” and the “proven successor—a known quantity.” GTA 6 “will most closely resemble the documented sequel curve,” and will see linear growth as we get closer to release, with Newzoo predicting that first-week pre-order sales will account for about 5.8% of total sales by the end of the game’s launch week.
Having said this, the company believes GTA 6 could reach $4.5 billion in sales by the end of its first week on sale, which is about 51 million copies sold.
GTA 6 is the most anticipated game of all time, but Newzoo noted that, contrary to social media reports, the game “hasn’t delivered a billion dollars in pre-orders 21 weeks out” from launch.
“This is absurd. Given what pre-order curves look like, nothing has ever done it and nothing will do it in the near future,” Newzoo said. “What the data actually shows is $180 million in digital pre-order spend across the US and the top five European markets in the last week of June, which equates to a global opening week of around $260 million, with most of the ramp ahead.”
It added: “Run that figure through the plausible band of pre-order curves, and GTA VI is on track to book between $3.25 billion and $5.2 billion in launch revenue from one week. Even by the most conservative reading of GTA 6 frontloading harder than any major title in our data set, it lands at a huge number by any historical standard.”
GTA 6 will officially launch on November 19, but physical copies will not come with a disc, but a digital download code. Despite the controversy surrounding the move, a recent report suggested that the physical edition is a top seller at several retailers.
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