Grand Theft Auto V, despite its release just last year, has hit another incredibly impressive milestone. Take Two Interactive revealed yesterday that GTA 5 has almost crossed $2 billion in sales. That translates to 33 million copies sold, and the game still holds the astonishing launch day record of selling $800 million worth of copies in just 24 hours.
It wasn’t always this way, however. The series has come a long way since its humble origins all the way back in 1997 with the release of the original game. Far from the open world 3D sandbox we know today, the first and second games were played from a top down perspective, and it’s hard to believe the leap from 2 to 3 in just two years.
Released in 2001, GTA 3 was a nearly complete reinvention of the series, and the game that turned Grand Theft Auto to middling critical and commercial success to an absolute sales monster. By moving to 3D and allowing lots of out-of-car gameplay, GTA became one of the first shooter sandbox games, and is universally recognized as one of the best to this day. Over the course of its lifespan, GTA 3 has sold well over 17 million copies, and developer Rockstar knew they had something special on their hands.
They decided to ditch the numbers for a while, and the next two games in the series were referred to by their subtitles only, GTA: Vice City (2002) and GTA: San Andreas (2004). Each game was progressively bigger than the last, and moved around the country, leaving Liberty City behind in favor of a faux-Miami and an LA/SF hybrid in Andreas. To date, Vice City has sold over 20 million copies and San Andreas blew past that with 27.5 million sold.
It was then that Rockstar knew that in order to keep topping themselves, they couldn’t keep pace releasing a new GTA every two years. They had to embrace the jump to the next console generation which was graduating PS2 and Xbox to PS3 and Xbox 360, and so it took them four years to release GTA 4 in 2008.
GTA 4 debuted with a complete rework of Liberty City, now nearly an exact replica of most of Manhattan due to the processing power of the new consoles. It was greeted with near universal acclaim from critics, and won many, many game of the year awards. Right now, sales hover around 25 million copies sold, though it’s still moving more quickly than the older San Andreas, so it may surpass that game yet. GTA 4 was the first game in the series to expand without needing a full sequel, releasing hugely substantive DLC packs that only added to the game’s profitability.
And then in 2013, GTA 5 arrived, shattering every record of not only the Grand Theft Auto series, but ALL of gaming. The $800M day one total snapped Call of Duty’s streak, as that series had been breaking its own 24 hour sales record with each passing year. 33 million and $2B in sales so far makes it the most profitable game in the series yet, and it hasn’t even been out for a full year. There are rumors the game will make it to next generation of consoles as well as the Xbox 360 and PS3, and when that happens, it will add millions more to its totals.
GTA 5 also comes with Rockstar’s newest plan for sustainability. They packaged the game with GTA Online, a mini-MMO of sorts where players can design their own character, level them up, and buy cars, guns, clothes and property while playing cooperative or competitively with other players on the shared map. Rockstar is also planning more story DLC for the original game, and it will likely be a solid few years before they make another fully-fledged installment in the series. As you can see from the past games, the space between releases has slowly grown as the games become more and more expansive. At this point, fifty Liberty Cities of GTA 3 could fit inside the San Andreas map of GTA 5.
Despite lacking yearly releases like other gaming staples such as Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto is one of gaming’s biggest properties due to its neverending pursuit of quality. It may take four to five years for a new game to emerge in the series, but when it does, fans know it’s going to be a must-have. How else can you sell $800M worth of copies on day one?
Is GTA done breaking records? Grand Theft Auto 5 certainly isn’t, and given how well this new generation of consoles is selling, there’s no telling what’s going to happen when GTA 6 finally rolls around.
[Photo via Rockstar Games]
