Grand Theft Auto V will not stop selling. Take-Two has announced that GTA 5 sales have now exceeded 140 million units shipped, up from the 135 million number announced in August 2020. You might be losing sight of just how massive this number is based, but those sales figures exceed nearly every console platform ever released – all but the PS2 and DS. That’s absurd, friends.
The 140 million figure is current as of December 2020. This total of units ‘shipped’ includes retail discs sent to stores but not yet sold through to players, but in the modern age where the majority of game sales are now digital, that distinction means a lot less than it used to. This makes 2020 GTA 5’s biggest sales year since its launch in 2013.
So if you’re wondering why that GTA 6 release date still seems so far away, there really isn’t much incentive for Rockstar or Take-Two to pump out a sequel when the existing game is continuing to sell better than the vast majority of new release videogames.
Insider reports have made it pretty clear that GTA 6 is in development at this point, though it’s likely still a long way off. In today’s financial earnings call, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick tells investors that the company wants to pursue perfection – or as close as it can manage – with all its game titles. If that means something takes longer to develop, then so be it.
“You’re always better served to wait for perfection,” Zelnick says.