Xbox says its GTA 6 preorder share matches its slice of the console market

Xbox CSO Matthew Ball pushed back this week on a report claiming GTA 6 preorders are heavily skewed toward PS5, saying Microsoft is "very happy" with its numbers and that internal data shows Xbox's preorder share matches its share of the console market. The comment came in response to The Verge's Tom Warren, who framed the PS5 preorder dominance as ringing alarm bells about Xbox as a platform.

Ball's full statement: "The title is breaking records for Xbox, we expect even more records will be broken throughout the fall, and our internal analysis shows our share of preorders to be matching our share of the console market." The catch is that "matching market share" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here — analysts estimate PS5 is outselling the combined Xbox Series range by at least 2:1. Sony has sold over 95 million PS5 units as of June 30; Microsoft hasn't published Xbox Series sales figures in years. So if Ball's claim holds, there are still likely roughly twice as many GTA 6 preorders on PS5 than on Xbox.

The skew toward PlayStation also isn't surprising given the marketing partnership between Sony and Rockstar. Sony has been all-in on GTA 6 — gameplay reveals have focused on the PS5 version, Sony hardware appears in marketing materials, there's a custom GTA 6 UI exclusive to PS5, and Sony has published blog posts highlighting DualSense features like haptic feedback and the controller's built-in speaker that the game will use. The PlayStation app even got a GTA 6-themed icon. That level of platform partnership tends to move preorders.

Separately, The Verge's report also floated the idea that Xbox's ongoing "reset" under new CEO Asha Sharma could be laying groundwork to spin off Xbox or run it as a standalone subsidiary — a theory that has surfaced in prior reporting too. GTA 6 launches on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19.