The release of the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI could generate between $3.25 billion and $5.2 billion in sales by the end of its launch week. This forecast was published by the market intelligence firm Newzoo, based on the game's record-breaking pre-order campaign.
Pre-orders for the new hit from Rockstar Games opened on June 25, months ahead of its official release scheduled for November 19 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Anticipation surrounding the return to Vice City is sky-high, with industry insiders even claiming that the project's technological level will put it 20 years ahead of the rest of the industry.
According to Newzoo's estimates, players in the US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain spent approximately $180 million on digital pre-orders during the final week of June alone. When accounting for other regions (based on the geographical player distribution of GTA 5), global sales for the opening week of the campaign reached roughly $260 million.
Experts call this the strongest start to a pre-order campaign ever recorded in their dataset. At the same time, analysts debunked viral rumors claiming the game had already generated $1 billion from pre-orders.
Newzoo analysts developed several forecasting models for GTA 6 sales based on consumer behavior patterns from other major franchises:
The upper limit of the analysts' projections reaches $5.2 billion. These figures represent independent calculations by Newzoo rather than official forecasts from Rockstar or its parent company, Take-Two. They also include all accumulated pre-orders prior to release, rather than solely purchases made during the seven days after launch.
Reminder, Epic Games Store is giving away Echo Generation and Luto for free.
