Take-Two has sky high expectations for Grand Theft Auto 6.
Twitter user Millie A shared this claim on their account:
Take-Two’s internal sales forecast for #GTA6 projects 18 – 20Million units sold within the first 24 hours of release, based on PSN & Microsoft Store wishlist data alongside retail pre-orders.
Millie A shares this description for themselves on their profile:
Working proudly within the Entertainment and Sports Industry. Stats crazy. No requests please.
We can’t vouch for Millie A’s veracity, but you the reader can decide if you trust these claims and to what degree you do.
Does That Sound Crazy? Or Not Crazy Enough?
How do we put this in context? Of course, we can look at its immediate predecessor.
The Guinness World Records claimed that Grand Theft Auto V sold 11.21 million copies in its first 24 hours. They noted this achievement because it put the game on top as the fastest selling game in history.
For their part, Take-Two Interactive would only confirm that the game made $ 800 million in revenue in its first 24 hours, ballooning to $ 1 billion in the first three days.
Guinness pegged its day one sales at $ 815.7 million in revenue. They also claimed that they worked with Rockstar to confirm these figures.
But What If ‘Prevailing Circumstances’ Get In The Way?
For some months now, the industry has apparently been hoping that Nintendo’s Switch 2 console and Grand Theft Auto 6 would bring back the video game business in a big way. So far, that hasn’t really happened yet.
Of course, Grand Theft Auto 6 got delayed, so it could have huge impact when it does release next year. For the case of Nintendo, it’s something of a mixed bag.
The Switch 2 is breaking sales records left and right. But it is probably too early to expect it to have a huge effect on the industry overall. The six million consoles sold in four months is impressive at its pace. But that’s obviously not fast enough to match or exceed the user base of the Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and especially Nintendo’s original Switch.
There are other issues such as Game-Key Cards and the rumored withholding of dev kits. But it’s also too early to verify if these issues really do affect Nintendo’s bottomline.
Ultimately, The Big Question Is The Price
The question hovering around Rockstar’s next big game next year is the price. And the actions of other publishers could direct their decision.
Nintendo hedged their bet with Mario Kart World. While they priced it at $ 80, most gamers bought it as part of a Switch 2 bundle.
Microsoft was not successful in selling their fans to pay $ 80 for The Outer Worlds 2. After outcry, including from the developer itself, they backed down to sell it at $ 70.
Take-Two could also go for $ 70 for Grand Theft Auto 6. But we all know that they could get away with selling it for much more.
If Take-Two took that risk, though, they knew that they could lose their fans for the next entry. While there’s been a lot of speculation around this, we don’t really know what they plan to do yet.
We would all be overjoyed if Rockstar went back to $ 60 after all. But if the gaming market continues to become more unfavorable, they may not get to choose to keep the fans happy after all.
