GTA 6 could pull in up to $5.2 billion in its first week, Newzoo predicts

Research firm Newzoo has published a detailed forecast suggesting GTA 6 will generate between $3.25 billion and $5.2 billion in global sales by the end of its launch week — figures that would dwarf GTA 5's record-breaking $1 billion in 72 hours back in 2013. The game launches November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Newzoo's numbers start with a concrete data point: GTA 6 racked up roughly $180 million in digital preorder spending across the US and five major European markets — the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain — during the final week of June alone, after preorders went live on June 25. Using GTA 5's lifetime console player distribution as a conversion factor (those six markets account for about 69% of GTA 5's total console base), Newzoo extrapolates that to approximately $260 million in global first-week preorder spending — the largest opening the firm has ever tracked. Newzoo management consultant Ronan Patrick called it "the largest opening Newzoo has observed," adding that "for a title launching in November 2026, the scale of demand this far ahead of release is rare, even among the industry's biggest franchises." Plugging that figure into preorder-to-launch-week revenue curves puts GTA 6 on track for either $5.2 billion (Proven Sequel curve, ~5.8% of cumulative revenue in week one, implying roughly 51 million units at an assumed $88 average) or $3.3 billion at the conservative end (~8% front-loading, around 37 million units). GTA 6 is priced at $80 for the standard edition and $100 for the premium edition, and is digital-only — no disc version exists even for physical retail copies.

Newzoo also explicitly shot down viral social media claims that GTA 6 had already crossed $1 billion in preorders within three weeks of going on sale. "This is absurd," Patrick said. "Given how preorder curves look, nothing ever has and nothing ever will in the near future." Take-Two has not released any official preorder figures, though an update could come at the company's next earnings briefing in August. For context, GTA 5 — which cost a fraction of what GTA 6 reportedly has — went on to sell nearly 230 million units and become the second best-selling game of all time behind Minecraft. Industry estimates, cited by Business Insider earlier this year, put GTA 6's development budget at $1–1.5 billion, which would make it one of the most expensive entertainment products ever made. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick declined to confirm the figure but acknowledged it "was expensive."

If Newzoo's projections hold, GTA 6 will almost certainly beat GTA 5's $1 billion milestone faster than any entertainment product in history — faster even than Avengers: Endgame's five-day global box office run. Whether Take-Two shares any hard preorder data before launch remains to be seen, but August's earnings call is the next likely moment for official numbers.