Grand Theft Auto V Sells $800 Million On Launch Day

[fix-the-spade]

Have they said why they haven't?

They are almost certainly making PC, PS4 and Xbone versions of GTA V.

There's a good Pach Attack on Gametrailers where he explains the reasons they haven't announced any of them yet. At it's most basic it's because they (Take 2 and Rockstar) have a lot of money at stake in GTA V and they want the sales straight away, they absolutely do not want people holding off for the PC/XBone/PS4 version as that leaves time for hype/spoilers/piracy to eat chunks out of their potential sales.

As it is, there are 150 million PS3/360s out there right now, they only need a fraction of that and the game is financially sound (it seems to be just that now a day later). Once the new consoles are out a next gen version will no doubt get announced (haven't those published screenshots looked suspiciously good for PS3/360 games?), by that point they no longer present a financial or sales risk to the current gen version.

 

[Bad Jim]

I'll bring this up next time someone complains about dev costs being too high. With this kind of market, you really can spend tens or even hundreds of millions making a game and make a profit.

 

[CriticalMiss]

Ok, I take back anything I said about them being silly for spending so much on making the game. And they are going to destroy the previous record by a mile on top of making an arse load of money.

That said, this bit sounds bullshit:

Rockstar Games have outdone themselves, setting the entertainment industry's new standard for creativity, innovation and excellence

It's GTA. There isn't much innovation going on regardless of how much cash it has raked in, unless an online mode is the innovation. I think he meant this:

Rockstar Games have outdone themselves, making way more money in one day than that Cowl of Dirty thing or whatever it's called. Up yours Kotick! YOLO!

 

[Xariat]

Just ran the numbers: $800MM at $60 retail per unit = 1.3 million units

Try 13 million and you'll get a little closer to the truth.

This is quite staggering news, so much that I question whether or not there has been a typo somewhere.

In any case, good on R* for their successful launch

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Just ran the numbers: $800MM at $60 retail per unit = 1.3 million units

I wonder how many of those were pre-order.

Maybe you made a typo. It's 13 million units. And I think I read that they had 2.4 million pre-orders a couple of months before release.

 

[1337mokro]

That's a nice sales figure. I'll be waiting on my PC version though. I want to play this thing in full graphics and smooth framerates without having to resort to partial HDD loading and disc reading at the same time to make it work.

They will be porting this game to PS4 and Xbone soon most likely and before that probably a PC version to maximize profits.

200 million is a steep pricetag and I blissfully ignored any reviews or stories people have about this game because I want to see what the game is first hand. Is it another bi-polar mess like GTA's story line. Where the characters and the story were excellent had they been in any other game.

 

[fix-the-spade]

I'll bring this up next time someone complains about dev costs being too high. With this kind of market, you really can spend tens or even hundreds of millions making a game and make a profit.

Trouble is, this, Fifa, Call of Duty, Madden and Battlefield are the only series that can justify this kind of budget (maybe Mass Effect and Valve's games, but Valve are industry freaks).

Every other 'triple A' can shift between one and five million units, it's pretty consistent across entire series.
Dead Space, Crysis, Burnout, Need for Speed, Tomb Raider and so on always get between one and five million sales. The budget's got to reflect that or you get Tomb Raider style insanity where five million sales is still a failure.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Interesting that the pre-orders seem to be just a small percentage of the day one sales (2.4MM out of 13.3MM, or 18%).

Note, that was a couple of months before release. It could have been significantly higher days before release.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Just ran the numbers: $800MM at $60 retail per unit = 13.3 million units

They only need to be making eighteen or so dollars per sale and they're already in profit after a day, blimey!

 

[AldUK]

Am I the only one around here who finds GTA repulsive? I love the idea of open-world, but unless I play the entire game muted and skip every disgusting cut-scene, I just feel dirty playing the game.

And before everyone labels me, I am not a particularly conservative person, I am not religious, I'm not a Republican (I'm not even American) and I don't equate video games with real-life violence.

 

[health-bar]

finally, now fucking call of duty doesnt hold that record.

 

[RandV80]

Am I the only one around here who finds GTA repulsive? I love the idea of open-world, but unless I play the entire game muted and skip every disgusting cut-scene, I just feel dirty playing the game.

And before everyone labels me, I am not a particularly conservative person, I am not religious, I'm not a Republican (I'm not even American) and I don't equate video games with real-life violence.

Eh I guess there's a few of us. I mean if it's open world vehicular carnage I loved the Carmageddon games back in the day, but while there are things I'd certainly admire about the series playing the gangsta/thug life has never appealed to me. Same thing with shows The Godfather, Goodfella's, Scarface, Sopranos, and so on. The fact that this is a genre that tends to be widely popular means there some form of romanticized appeal to the mobster lifestyle, but I've just never felt it. To me these organizations/people are scumbags that are a plague on our society and their popularity in media has always left me conflicted.

 

[RandV80]

double post...

 

[BrotherRool]

So yep, 2k were pretty wise to invest as much as they did. GTA's are such consistent blockbusters that it's really not a risk as long as you give them enough time and money to make sure it's good. The sort of thing that would bring GTA down would probably trigger a minor industry crash. And this is probably enough money to bank at least one new IP for them

 

[Doom972]

It's good to see a single player focused game that's not afraid to offend people breaking CoD's record, even if much of it is due to brand recognition.

I was burned by GTA IV's initial PC release so it'll probably be a few months after the yet-to-be announced PC version's release until I get it, but I do plan to do it.

Most importantly, you can see that the developers of the GTA games enjoy making them. I think that it has a lot to do with what makes these games so good.

 

[Dragonbums]

This also proves two things.

1)The PC market is not as important as they think they are. I'm specifically referring to the PC owners who labled this game doomed to fail on the basis that they did not make a simultaneous release on the PC and without them the game can't sell.

2) Consoles are still a very lucrative investment.


Good on you Rockstar. Was it still necessary to spend all that money? No.

But why do you give a shit. You made back that amount x4.

 

[Dragonbums]

I'll bring this up next time someone complains about dev costs being too high. With this kind of market, you really can spend tens or even hundreds of millions making a game and make a profit.

You can't use this as an example honestly. $200 million is a fuck ton of money to spend on a game.

Rockstar can do it, and get away with it, because it is just as well renowned as CoD, Pokemon, Halo, and Mario. They have a humongous fanbase that are guaranteed to pre order the game the moment it's announced without even seeing what the game is like.

Most companies cannot afford that luxury, and many a game have sunk companies this gen for having budget games not even a fraction of this.

 

[YodaUnleashed]

I'm glad something as strikingly ambitious as GTA V is beating out the latest carbon-copy Call of Duty title. But then I suppose GTA's reputation precedes it and this sort of amazing reception is to be expected, especially for such a insanely popular series that only releases every several years (5 years this time) instead of anually.