GTA 5 Shares Title of Highest-Rated Game on Metacritic

Today is Grand Theft Auto day. As a publisher, you can try to accept the insurmountable challenge and promote a product during the release of one of Rockstar’s open-world titles, but all those valuable members of your audience are likely still playing the copy of GTA 5 they picked up during the midnight release. We all know that the game is going to be a financial homerun, but new data coming out of Metacritic has revealed that it’s also one of the biggest critical darlings of all time.

After collecting every credible review available since the embargo lifted, the aggregator site has GTA 5 sitting pretty at an average score of 97 on the PS3 and 98 on the Xbox 360. This puts it right alongside – you guessed it – GTA 4 as the most critically heralded game on the website. The company’s data only goes back to 2001, but all that means is that Rockstar is holding strong to the top two positions on a site that more than a few publishers look at to determine bonuses.

Even with such a successful early start, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser asserts that making these games isn’t just for the money.

“You know, it’s not a sport, we’re not involved in competition with people that way. We’re trying to make something that is hopefully very enjoyable and that some people find amazing and incredible and really love, that we can hopefully make the people that invested in us some money back,” he said.

Grand Theft Auto 5 is now available on PlayStation 3 and PC.