If only we had a dime for every time it's been said that Grand Theft Auto VI has not launched and yet is already breaking records. According to the sales tracker Sensor Tower, the game is now the most pre-ordered title in history, with an estimated 9.69 million digital pre-orders across PS5 and Xbox Series X and S. The total has pushed it past Cyberpunk 2077, the game that held the previous mark.
The numbers are staggering for a pre-launch window. Sensor Tower puts the revenue from those pre-orders at around $942 million, net of returns and cancellations and all of it comes from just two console platforms with nine days still on the clock. GTA VI has no PC version at launch, so this record is built entirely on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series owners.
The fine print matters here though. Sensor Tower's figure is a third-party estimate of digital console pre-orders only, so it leaves out physical copies and any PC sales. Cyberpunk 2077's 8 million was an official CD Projekt Red disclosure that counted both digital and physical across more platforms, PC included.
However, this is not only tracker noise. Sony and Microsoft have each confirmed GTA VI as the most pre-ordered title in the history of their digital stores, the PlayStation Store and the Microsoft Store, without putting out exact totals.
Take-Two Interactive has said pre-orders are far exceeding expectations, matching our earlier coverage of pre-orders vastly beating its forecasts, even though it held its full-year forecast steady and has not published a global number.
The most pre-ordered games on record
Game | Pre-orders | Est. revenue | Source | What it counts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Grand Theft Auto VI (2026) | About 9.69 million | About $942 million | Sensor Tower estimate | Digital console only, PS5 and Xbox Series |
Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) | 8 million and up | Not disclosed | CD Projekt Red, official | Digital and physical, all platforms including PC |
The two figures are not measured the same way, which is the catch behind the record.
Analyst Daniel Dawkins points out that pre-orders are speeding up as launch nears. We have watched that curve steepen for months, from Xbox pre-orders alone passing a million to a noticeable surge after the premiere of GTA VI: An Extended Look. Sensor Tower had GTA VI at 7.71 million about six days earlier, so it has added roughly 330,000 a day since. If that pace merely holds, Dawkins reckons on X that another 2.97 million could come in before launch, for a total near 12.7 million.
Of course, pre-order-to-sales ratios can swing wildly, from around 20 percent for some games to the 50 to 60 percent Cyberpunk 2077 saw. Sensor Tower's data is not official either. For scale, Grand Theft Auto V sold 29 million copies in its first six weeks and has gone on to move more than 200 million. Against those pre-orders, Dawkins suggests 25 million first-month copies now looks conservative.
With that said, pre-order records are messy by nature, with every tracker, platform and publisher counting the number differently, so the only way we'll know what's true is if Take-Two confirms it at its next earnings call. Until then, we'll have to wait for official confirmation.
Still, if this is indeed true, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise based on how much traction the game has and will continue to get. At this rate, the people who bet on a historic launch may have underestimated the pull of Grand Theft Auto.