Grand Theft Auto 6 is projected to make an eye-watering $3 billion in its first year on sale.
Rockstar’s hotly anticipated open-world crime caper is currently due out fall 2025 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, with no word on a PC release for now.
A new report by the Financial Times, based on analysis by video game research group DFC Intelligence, predicts GTA 6 will exceed $1 billion in pre-orders before it even launches. Surprising no-one, GTA 6 is expected to be the biggest entertainment launch of 2025, ahead of any movie or competing video game.
DFC predicted total revenue from GTA 6’s first 12 months on sale will reach $3.2 billion. To put that into context, 2024’s highest-grossing movie, Inside Out 2, made just shy of $1.7 billion at the global box office. In 2013, it took Grand Theft Auto 5 just three days to surpass $1 billion in sales — the fastest to that figure in entertainment history.
Strauss Zelnick, boss of Rockstar parent company Take-Two, told the Financial Times: “I never claim victory before it occurs. That said, I think Rockstar Games will once again deliver something absolutely phenomenal… Certainly the anticipation is high.”
The huge projected revenue of GTA 6 is up against similarly huge development costs, which the Financial Times estimates from the high hundreds of millions to as much as $2 billion. There’s a lot riding on GTA 6, then, but not just for Take-Two and Rockstar. In March last year, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella predicted Rockstar’s surefire hit would spark “renewed interest” in video games, before going one step further: “There’s probably never been a more important thing to ever release in the industry, so no pressure.”
GTA 6 is the kind of game that will sell consoles. Sony’s PS5 Pro will no doubt benefit greatly from interest in GTA 6, too. Let’s remember: GTA 6 is not coming out on PC at launch; to play you must own a PlayStation or an Xbox. Beyond the point of sale, GTA 6’s GTA Online equivalent will surely come packed with microtransactions as the current GTA Online does. Microsoft and Sony will get their cut of any money spent there, too.
As the Financial Times points out, the almost guaranteed success of GTA 6 comes amid one of the toughest periods for the video game industry in recent memory. More than 33,000 people have lost their jobs since 2022, with huge layoffs at the likes of Microsoft and Sony. Indeed, Take-Two itself has suffered layoffs and studio closures.
All eyes are on Rockstar for a firm GTA 6 release date, or, as some are predicting, a delay into 2026. While you wait to find out, IGN has much more on GTA 6 to check out, including an ex-Rockstar dev who says the studio probably won’t be able to decide whether GTA 6 is delayed until May 2025, the boss of Take-Two’s coy response on whether GTA 6 is coming to PC, and the expert opinion on whether the PS5 Pro will run GTA 6 at 60 frames per second.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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