GTA 6 has ‘the strongest pre-order campaign on record’, is on track to sell 37-51 million in week one, analytics firm says
Newzoo estimates around $260 million was spent during the first week of pre-orders
Grand Theft Auto 6’s pre-order campaign is the strongest on record so far, according to Newzoo.
The video game market data, research and insights firm has released new analysis on the first week of pre-orders, based on digital spending data.
According to its analysis, around $180 million was spent on digital pre-orders across the US and the five largest European markets during the last week of June.
By using the player distribution of GTA 5 as a guide, Newzoo has estimated that the total global spend was around $260 million in the first week of pre-orders.
“That kicks off the strongest pre-order campaign ever recorded,” the firm concluded.
The company has also used this data to predict first week sales for Grand Theft Auto 6 when it’s released in November.
According to Newzoo, hit titles usually follow three sales curves – the brand new IP (which has low pre-orders and takes off after reviews come in), the “sequel with performance uncertainty” (where players wait to see if a specific sequel is good before buying) and the “proven sequel” (where more pre-orders are booked early).
The firm suggests GTA 6 will follow the proven sequel model, and predicts that the first-week pre-order sales account for roughly 5.8% of the total sales by the end of the game’s actual launch week.
With that model in mind, Newzoo believes the game is on pace to reach $4.5 billion sales by the end of its first week on sale, meaning roughly 51 million copies sold.
“A tremendous number by any historical standard”
The company notes that because this GTA 6 is the most anticipated game of all time, its pre-orders could be more front-loaded than usual, but suggests that even if this is taken into account the game could still be looking at around $3.3 billion in sales by the end of its first week, or around 37 million units sold.
“Contrary to social media reports, GTA 6 has not done a billion dollars in pre-orders 21 weeks out,” Newzoo’s analysis says. “This is absurd. Given how pre-order curves look, nothing ever has and nothing ever will in the near future.
“What the data actually shows is $180 million in digital pre-order spend across the US and the five largest European markets in the final week of June, translating to a global opening week of roughly $260 million, with most of the ramp still ahead.
“Run that figure through the plausible band of preorder curves, and GTA VI is on track to book between $3.25 billion and $5.2 billion in week-one launch revenue. Even at the most conservative reading, namely that GTA 6 front-loads harder than any major title in our dataset, it lands at a tremendous number by any historical standard.”
