Topline
Pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI, the highly-anticipated sequel to the second-best selling video game of all time, will start at midnight on Thursday, Rockstar Games announced Wednesday, putting an end to a decade-long wait for the latest installment in a $10 billion video game franchise.
Key Facts
Pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI will cost $79.99 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S games and an “Ultimate Edition,” which includes additional cars, clothing, weapons and other in-game add-ons, will be sold for $99.99.
That price makes GTA 6 one of the most expensive base versions of a top-tier game ever released, above the $69.99 of games like Ghost of Yōtei from Sony, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom from Nintendo and Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3.
The game will launch on Nov. 19.
Shares of Take-Two, Rockstar Games’ parent company, rose more than 3% in premarket trading Wednesday.
SURPRISING FACT
Norwegian electronics retailer Komplett is offering a free copy of GTA 6 to any Norwegian parent whose baby is born on Nov. 19.
what to watch for
How many Grand Theft Auto VI copies sell. Analysts at DFC Intelligence, a market research firm specializing in video games, expect Rockstar to sell 40 million units of the game in the first year.
BIG NUMBER
$1 billion. That’s how much DFC Intelligence estimates Rockstar will make on pre-orders of GTA VI alone, with analysts predicting the game generates $3.2 billion in revenue within its first year.
TANGENT
The game’s predecessor, GTA 5, was released in 2013 to become the second-best selling video game of all time (behind Minecraft). It sold more than 215 million copies worldwide—larger than the population of many major countries—and made $1 billion in the first three days after launch. The multiplayer component, Grand Theft Auto Online, still attracts an estimated 18 million monthly active users and at various points exceeded 30 million monthly users. The GTA franchise has now survived three video game console generations and generated more than $10 billion in revenue.
Key background
The wait for Grand Theft Auto VI has become an essential part of the game’s lore. When GTA 5 unexpectedly became the game of a generation, Rockstar spent years expanding GTA online; releasing new heists, businesses, vehicles and events; and supporting its millions of monthly active players instead of developing the next game in the series. The brand also spent much of the 2010s making another giant game—Red Dead Redemption 2—which became one of the most expensive entertainment productions ever made and occupied thousands of developers. Several major Rockstar figures also left the company during the GTA VI development cycle, including founder Dan Houser, and the project was reportedly rebooted and scaled back throughout production. At 13 years, the wait for GTA 6 is one of the longest ever for a major entertainment sequel and fans online have joked its release constitutes a major historical event.