Ever since Rockstar officially teased and finally revealed Red Dead Redemption 2 over the course of the past few days, the internet has practically exploded in praise and anticipation. Gaming sites have been riding the wave caused by this splash ever since, and it has dominated community discussions as well. Anyone looking at the publicity footprint of this reveal would think that RDR2 will be massively popular when it launches.
While this will undoubtedly be true, both analysts and common sense dictate that Red Dead Redemption 2 will likely not replicate GTA 5's overwhelming massive success. GTA's success was largely attributed to mainstream popularity and brand recognition. GTA has achieved the status of practically being a household word. Non-gamers will know what it is about generally, and GTA has become a synonym for violent crimes with cars involved.
Even though GTA 5 had a massive marketing campaign backing it, it wouldn't have achieved this level of success via ads and promotions alone. It already possessed a massive fanbase, which helped boost the effect of the costly marketing campaign. The staggered launch spread over three phases — last-gen, current gen and PC — also boosted sales, since several players bought the game all three times, and newer markets were opened up each time.
On the flipside, while Red Dead is pretty well known in gaming circles, it doesn't have any brand recognition outside, and lacks GTA's mainstream popularity. The game was never present on PC, therefore a sizeable audience has no connection to it, and RDR2 hasn't been announced for PC either. As it stands, the game will only have a single launch, on the current gen consoles.
All this considered, Red Dead Redemption 2 is lacking pretty much everything that help GTA 5 become such a massive success story. We don't doubt RDR2's marketing campaign will be at least as big as GTA 5's, however the other factors that helped it along aren't present. Currently, GTA 5 holds the titles of best selling non-bundled game of all time, with well over 65 million copies sold, not counting digital sales.
