Grand Theft Auto: The GTA Trilogy likely sold up 10 million copies
Gran Turismo San Andreas: The Definitive Edition was a tremendous economic success for Rockstar Games despite being panned by reviewers and gamers alike for its long list of faults, glitches, and art style flaws.
Take-Two, the publisher of Grand Theft Auto V and the rest of the series, disclosed updated lifetime shipping data for the games in an investor presentation on Monday.
The GTA series has already sold over 370 million units, including more than 160 million copies of GTA V, according to the most recent numbers.
Take-Two announced last November, right before the release of the GTA trilogy remaster collection, that 355 million copies of the series had been sold (+15 million) and 155 million copies of GTA V had been sold (+5 million).
At Take-quarterly Two’s financial announcement, Strauss Zelnick, chairman and CEO of the publisher, acknowledged the GTA Trilogy was a big success for the company.
With the release of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition for current and prior-generation consoles and PC through the Rockstar Games Launcher, Rockstar Games honoured the 20th anniversary of the debut of Grand Theft Auto III,” Zelnick remarked.
The GTA Trilogy’s financial success seems to have been exposed through VGC’s brilliant math. To far, the GTA series has sold 370 million copies, up from 355 million in November of last year – a difference of 15 million units.
A other GTA game accounted for the remaining 10 million more sales, with GTA V only responsible for 5 million (the game has now sold 160 million copies, up from 155 million last quarter). In the past quarter, there were no significant GTA releases, therefore the GTA Trilogy is likely responsible for most of the remaining 10 million sales, with the exception of a few purchases of earlier GTA titles.
It’s also unlikely that the GTA Trilogy will be forgotten any time soon. In the first half of 2022, the game will be released on iOS and Android, presumably with fewer bugs.
Considering how poorly the GTA Trilogy launched, its impressive sales numbers may come as a surprise. In general, the game was panned due to its many technical faults, graphic glitches, and a significantly revised visual style that did not so much improve on the originals as it did push them in a whole other way.
It was at this moment that Rockstar vowed to provide gamers not only the original versions of the games for free, but also to give them a free choice of another game from their library. While first removing them from digital stores, they then apologised and vowed to restore them, essentially locking gamers into the remastered versions.
As a result of such sacrifices, Take-Two does not seem to be persuaded that the GTA Trilogy was launched in poor quality. However, in its last financial report, it said that “all three games” of the GTA trilogy had been “upgraded across the board,” including “graphic enhancements and contemporary controls for all three titles,” while still preserving its “classic” look and feel.
It’s hard to believe that the Grand Theft Auto series is as popular as it is. Rockstar has shown that even if a GTA game is a poor mess, it will be devoured by hungry fans with GTA V’s 160 million sales and year-on-year sales growth.
As soon as Rockstar has stated that GTA 6 is currently under production, you may be certain that the game will do just well.
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The GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition, which was released in November, has a slew of bugs and glitches, and gamers were quick to voice their displeasure (and us). However, this does not seem to have prevented it from selling very well.
“The trilogy considerably exceeded[ed] our commercial expectations,” Take-Two noted in its most recent financial report. This is good to know, even if it doesn’t tell the entire picture since corporations may establish any parameters they want internally and then claim a game surpassed them.
VGC, on the other hand, could have been able to determine its true sales data with a little creative calculation. As of the conclusion of the first quarter in January, Take-Two has sold over 370 million copies of the GTA series overall, with GTA V alone selling over 160 million copies. There were 355 million in the previous quarter, with 155 million of them being for GTA V alone. There’s a 10 million-unit gap between GTA V’s sales and those of the rest of the series, according to financial data from recent prior quarters, but it’s a constant trend.
Since there were no other significant GTA games released during that time period and the GTA Trilogy was released in November through December, it is reasonable to assume that the remaining 10 million sales were mostly due to the GTA Trilogy.
However, Take-Two has been apologetic both at the time of launch and today and has vowed to remedy the trilogy’s shortcomings. It has already published a number of significant upgrades and will continue to do so in the near future. Additionally, an Android and iOS version of this game is expected to be released sometime this year. On the other hand, the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of Grand Theft Auto V will get an enhanced version on March 15.
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told IGN that Rockstar is totally in command of the choice to divulge additional information in the future, despite the fact that Rockstar just confirmed this week that a new GTA game was definitely in production.