With the release date of one of the most anticipated games of all time confirmed, the question: can GTA VI crack $1 billion in 24 hours?
On Tuesday Rockstar Games dropped a trailer for GTA VI, revealed the next chapter of its Grand Theft Auto series will hit shelves in 2025.
"GTA VI might be the most highly-anticipated video game in history. Based on consumer's familiarity with the brand, there's every reason to believe GTA VI will outsell Rockstar Games' previous hits like GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2," Matthew Thomas Payne, associate professor of media studies at the University of Notre Dame and an avid GTA fan, told Newsweek.
"This means selling tens of millions of units in the opening days, and breaking a billion in revenue in the first week or two."
When GTA VI premieres it will have been 12 years since the fifth generation of the game became available. GTA V went on to sell 190 million copies, according to Rockstar's parent company, Take2Games.
Within 24 hours of its release, GTA V made $815 million and since 2013 has earned almost $8 billion. It also broke multiple Guinness Book of World Records, including fastest video game to gross $1 billion.
Given the anticipation for GTA VI, which trended for hours on X, formerly Twitter, the game may be set to smash its predecessor and all other video games out of the water.
Another expert suggested GTA VI might even surpass the eye-watering $1.5 billion mark in its first 24 hours.
"The franchise has enjoyed consistent popularity over the last decade with players re-purchasing the game multiple times across three console generations," Bryant Francis, senior editor at Gamedeveloper.com, told Newsweek.
"This is the only franchise I can think of that is equally beloved by players who purchase one-three games per year, and hardcore players who will spend hours upon hours role-playing in Grand Theft Auto Online. That combined passion for the sequel is building to an explosive launch in 2025."
Even Take2Games seems to be anticipating a sales boon after saying it "expected exciting upcoming catalysts" to help it "achieve new record levels of financial performance," for the fiscal year from March 2024 to March 2025. It made that prediction during its recent quarterly earnings call in November.
It also predicted an annual growth rate of 14 percent over the next three years, which Take2Games equated to around $8 billion. The company also predicted in its May earnings call that it would earn $1 billion in "Adjusted Unrestricted Operating Cash Flow."
One expert in video game finance believes these forecasts by Take2Games indicate it anticipates an unprecedented level of sales thanks GTA VI. It could easily sell 25 million copies in one day and make $1 billion in its 24 hours on the market, according to Joost van Dreunen.
"Take-Two discussed its updated development pipeline with a total of 36 titles for 2025-2026, but all everyone heard was an imminent GTA 6 release," van Dreunen wrote in his newsletter.
"According to one analyst, GTA VI is 'the only game capable of contributing to a $2.5 billion increase to net bookings'."
Payne explained to Newsweek the games' appeal.
"GTA is the 'Great American Sandbox Game.' It celebrates and critiques consumer excesses. It rewards player exploration and experimentation. And it updates American cultural myths and stories for new generations of players," he said.
Francis added: "Grand Theft Auto's impact on video game culture can't be understated. The series has been a standard-bearer for open world design and has fueled player interest in vast game worlds with different locales and colorful NPCs (non-playable characters). It's one of the few video game franchises that's consistently fulfilled one of media's most enduring power fantasies: the thrill of being a notorious gangster."
The new game will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S games and other entertainment systems.
GTA VI will take players to the state of Leonida, home to the fictional Miami-inspired setting of Vice City, a landscape last seen in the 2006 release GTA: Vice City Stories.
Rockstar described it as its "most immersive evolution of the Grand Theft Auto series yet."
The game will also make history with its first ever first female protagonist in an open-world GTA game.
Named Lucia, she is seen in the trailer wearing a prison uniform during what appears to be a parole interview. Lucia then shares her screen time with an unnamed male lead, with whom she's seen going on a series of Bonnie and Clyde-style crime sprees.
Francis explained why he was "curious" to see how Rockstar Games would "balance its widely-beloved debauchery while giving women more agency in the story and game world."
"The studio has had to reckon with well-deserved criticism over how the series portrays female characters," he explained. "Women sometimes take the role of charismatic criminals in the games' narratives but they are otherwise depicted either as exploitable sex workers or shallow NPCs you can take on dates."
Update 12/6/23, 6:50 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include Bryant Francis' comments.
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