Say what you will about GTA, the franchise still commands a great deal of admiration from fans ever since the first game debuted way back in 1997. The sequels have been just as loved and the latest installment in the franchise, GTA 5, has broken the all-time revenue record for an entertainment product such as an album, movie or song or video game, for that matter.
GTA 5 or GTA V has earned a staggering $6 billion dollars through sales till date, making it the highest grossing property in the entire entertainment industry. And that’s just through sales, which presumably does not include the many millions earned through microtransactions.
MarketWatch says the game has sold over 90 million copies since its launch in 2013 on the PlayStation, Xbox and PC platform. Just for the sake of comparison, a highly popular game like Call of Duty: Black Ops has only sold 24.2 million copies so far.
Regarding the game’s unprecedented success and the popularity it still enjoys five years after its launch, analyst Doug Creutz told the publication,“I think it’s a wild outlier. I think maybe with the exception something Nintendo has made—Mario Brothers—but aside from that there’s never been a console game that’s sold so many units.”
Moving away from the genre of gaming, GTA 5’s net haul so far is more than twice that of James Cameron’s sci-fi blockbuster, Avatar, which earned around $2.8 billion worldwide and became the highest grossing movie of the modern era. The game is still earning millions for the game’s publishers and ended 2017 as the sixth highest-selling title in the US, according to data compiled by NPD Group.
When it comes to platform revenue, GTA 5 has earned the highest 32.8% of its net revenue from PS3 sales, followed by PS4 at 27.4% and the Xbox 360 contributing 25.5% of its net earnings.
Nonetheless, GTA 5’s biggest strength lies in the game’s content and frequent addition of new modes which keeps gamers glued to the title, and of course there’s the whole open world exploration which can keep you hooked for hours. It’s a game worth spending money on and there are over 90 million people who will tell you that.
