Grand Theft Auto VI gave French retailer Cdiscount a record-breaking first day of pre-orders. Its offer director Nicolas Camia, quoted by Rockstar Mag, compared those first 24 hours with an entire typical pre-order campaign for a major franchise such as EA Sports FC, formerly known as FIFA, or Call of Duty. The next Grand Theft Auto reached six times that usual campaign volume; he did not describe a combined total for the two franchises.
A sixfold jump sounds enormous, and it is. But it measures something different from the earlier numbers posted by IGN Finds: Cdiscount is comparing demand across franchises at one retailer, while IGN’s ratio compares PlayStation and Xbox buyers. One does not confirm the other. Cdiscount’s result still lends weight to Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick’s argument for why GTA will never be an annual franchise.
For context, Call of Duty and EA Sports FC are two of the most reliable and massive annual franchises in gaming. They sell tens of millions of copies every year, like clockwork. So when a retailer says GTA 6 pre-orders ran six times higher than those titles, it is saying GTA 6 is outpacing the established annual giants by a wide margin, at least at this one store.
This is especially surprising considering that we're in the middle of football season with the World Cup ongoing.
GTA 6 Pre-Orders vs FIFA and Call of Duty
Detail | What CDiscount Said |
|---|---|
The figure | 6x more pre-orders than usual for major franchises |
The comparison | First-day GTA 6 volume versus a usual full campaign for major franchises such as EA Sports FC or Call of Duty—not their combined total |
The window | First 24 hours of pre-orders |
Peak traffic | Midnight, when pre-orders opened |
The scope | One French retailer, not a global figure |
Cdiscount compared GTA 6’s first 24 hours with its usual full pre-order campaigns for major franchises.
The earlier report of PS5 pre-orders running 6 to 1 over Xbox describes platform preference, not the total scale of demand. Alongside Cdiscount’s result, retailers warning of console shortages driven by demand and Take-Two stock climbing on pre-order news are separate signs of interest. They do not independently verify the retailer’s sixfold comparison.
A 6x figure over Call of Duty and EA Sports FC, two games that define "annual blockbuster," is a sign that GTA 6 is not just another big release. It is operating on a different tier of demand entirely, which we have been documenting all the way back to the trailer view records.
Of course, a 13-year-in-the-making release spikes higher than a yearly franchise on launch day, and it's not like every company has an unlimited budget or the annual money-making online component in Grand Theft Auto Online, to boot.
Take this as another to add to a growing list of confirmations. The game is huge. We already knew that. Now we're starting to get the numbers to prove this.
We'll likely find out more about the actual number closer to the next Take-Two earnings call in August.