As it turns out, Grand Theft Auto VI may not be the reason for every PlayStation 5 sales surge.
According to Circana, PlayStation 5 unit sales in the United States rose 22% year over year in September, hardware revenue climbed 43% and that made Sony the highest-earning console maker of the month. Price increases over the past year and the popularity of the beefed-up PS5 Pro pushed the revenue even higher than the unit numbers alone.
Bloomberg tied the surge to consumers getting ready for GTA 6, which isn't unreasonable considering how close we are to the game's launch.
The game costs $80, it needs a current console to run and millions of people have waited over a decade for it, so buying a PS5 now to be ready for November 19 is the kind of early purchase that shows up in September data. However, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella is not convinced of the report.
On Bluesky he said the weekly sales data points elsewhere, "the data suggest to me that Marvel's Wolverine was the primary driver of the PS5 increase in September, with both NBA 2K27 and Grand Theft Auto VI likely playing roles." Marvel's Wolverine launched as a PS5 console exclusive that month, so a hardware bump around it makes sense on its own.
Piscatella asks, why did Xbox Series sales fall 27% in the same month, when the game is coming to Xbox too. "So either GTA was not the reason for the PS5 bump, or people don't know it's also coming out on Xbox Series," he wrote.
US console sales in September, per Circana
Metric | Year-over-year change |
|---|---|
PS5 unit sales | Up 22% |
PS5 hardware revenue | Up 43% |
Xbox Series unit sales | Down 27% |
Circana data, with GTA 6 likely only one of several drivers rather than the whole story.
For the record, GTA 6 runs on both PS5 and Xbox Series X and S, with no PC version at launch. Anyone buying a console purely for the game has a real choice between the two. Rockstar's PlayStation-first marketing may indeed be steering that choice toward Sony.
Of course, if you ask Xbox executives, this isn't necessarily the case and the next Grand Theft Auto is selling really well on the Xbox platform as well and this Grandma is proof that not everyone who wants to play GTA 6 ends up getting an Xbox.
With that said, we can't simply ignore the possibility that, as we've already mentioned, people may have bought a PS5 or PS5 Pro because of the marketing run for GTA 6.
Rockstar Games has said GTA 6 plays best on PS5, the launch trailer opens on the PlayStation logo and the "best on PS5" line is all over the marketing. It is easy to picture a casual buyer walking into a store sure that GTA 6 only runs on a PS5. Sony did not get its logo on that trailer by chance, platform holders pay well to be the face of a launch this size.
So, which is which? Well, GTA 6 is clearly part of why PS5 revenue is climbing, but Marvel's Wolverine, NBA 2K27 and a year of price changes all share the credit. The real test comes in November, when the game is out and we have the launch-month numbers. We'll find out then what it truly does to console sales.