According to one analyst, Grand Theft Auto VI could earn back everything it cost to make before a single person actually plays it.
The claim comes from Karl Kontus, Sensor Tower's general manager of video game insights, the same analyst behind the recent finding that nearly nine in ten pre-orders are for the controversial $100 Ultimate Edition. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, he speculated that if the next Grand Theft Auto lands somewhere around 25 million pre-orders by launch, it will have ended up making $2 billion in sales all the while we're still pre-loading the game. In his estimate, the figure is enough to cover the game's entire production value, including the majority of its marketing budget.
Normally, a game has to go on sale and actually move copies to earn back what it cost to build, but Kontus is saying that the pre-order cash alone for GTA 6 is enough to put the game in the black before November 19, which would track if the pre-order estimates really exceeded any and all expectations.
Hypothetical GTA 6 Pre-Order Scenarios
Milestone | Pre-orders | Revenue before launch |
|---|---|---|
Tracked so far | ~4.3 million | Early days |
Cyberpunk 2077's record (2020) | ~8 million | The previous high mark |
Kontus's realistic estimate | ~25 million | ~$2 billion |
A "normal" trajectory from here | 40 million or more | Higher still |
What each scenario for the Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-order numbers could mean.
Of course, this is all theoretical. Sensor Tower is currently tracking around 4.3 million pre-orders, which is a far-cry from 25 million. This number will have to grow nearly six times in three months to reach $2 billion. However, it isn't an impossible number to reach either. Most pre-orders tend to flood in during the final week before launch anyway, so nobody actually knows the total until we are almost on top of it.
Speaking of unknown figures, $2 billion is a projection that's gone around for a while. It was never a confirmed figure. Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive have never said what GTA 6 cost to make, and that $2 billion is gross sales, not what Take-Two actually keeps once the storefronts take their cut.
So, really, as much as we'd love to get a chance to write that GTA 6 "already paid for itself", it's a sentence built on a soft number matched against another unknown.
With all the doubt surrounding GTA 6, what's not really in question is where it's headed. Even if you haircut Kontus's estimate hard, Cyberpunk 2077's roughly 8 million pre-orders in 2020 was the previous high-water mark for this sort of thing, and his conservative call is only three times that. We have already run the numbers on how few copies GTA 6 needs to break even and while ginormous, it wouldn't be wise to bet against GTA 6.
The only real question was and is whether the game sticks the creative landing. Selling was never a problem nor a risk.
If anything, Kontus may be lowballing it. His $2 billion roughly pencils out at the standard price, but with close to 90 percent of pre-orders going for the $100 version, the real haul could run higher. Either way, the number that actually matters still lands on November 19, when we find out how many of those pre-orders were real, and how the game holds up once people are finally allowed to play it.