Sensor Tower says GTA 6 pre-purchases are near 9.7 million, and PS5 is taking 75% of it

Sensor Tower put out an update to its GTA 6 sales tracker and the numbers are wild for a game nobody's actually played yet. They've got pre-purchases at 9.69 million units total, which they peg at roughly $942 million in gross revenue. Unofficial data, so take it with the usual grain of salt, but still.

The platform split is the part everyone's going to argue about. PS5 accounts for 7.23 million of those units, Xbox Series X|S gets 2.46 million. That's a clean 75/25. Revenue-wise it's $703 million on PS5 against $239 million on Xbox.

none of this should surprise anyone

PS5 outsells Xbox by a wide margin generally, so the split tracking the install base makes sense. Microsoft's even said GTA 6 is breaking records on their box, and the numbers line up with their share of the console market. Sony's got the marketing rights, Microsoft's out here putting the game on a custom console stuffed inside an alligator. Everyone's eating.

Sensor Tower is projecting up to 25 million pre-purchases by launch. If that 75/25 holds you're looking at about 18.5 million on PS5 and 6.5 million on Xbox. Before the game is even out.

the purchase intent stat is the one that got me

Circana says GTA 6 is sitting at 29% purchase intent among US console and PC gamers. Nearly 1 in 3. Apparently that's the highest purchase intent Circana has ever measured for any game. I don't know how you even benchmark that against anything else.

Worth remembering that both platform holders skim about 30% off the top in platform fees, so this is a very good quarter for Sony and Microsoft whether they lift a finger or not.

The one sour note in the piece is about console prices. Anyone buying a new box just for this is in for a shock, and the argument that GTA 6 can't fix the industry's deeper problems is probably fair. Still, 9.7 million before launch day is a hell of a thing.

Are you surprised the split is this lopsided, or did you figure it'd track the install base almost exactly?

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Source: GameSpot · Curated content.