GTA 6 Pre-Orders Are Running 148% Ahead of Any Major Game in Six Years

Everyone expected Grand Theft Auto VI to sell well. A new analysis shows it is selling on a scale the industry hasn't tracked before.

Analytics firm Sensor Tower compared U.S. digital pre-orders for the biggest games of the past six years, and GTA 6 is pacing 148% ahead of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the previous leader, over a comparable period before release. The gap is measured from 149 days to 45 days before launch. Diablo 4, Hogwarts Legacy and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 were also in the comparison, and all trail GTA 6 by a wide margin.

The Ultimate Edition is a big part of the story. The Ultimate Edition alone is more than 100% ahead of Modern Warfare 2, and it sits not far behind the standard edition. Sensor Tower has said roughly 89% of pre-orders so far are for the $100 Ultimate Edition, while premium editions typically make up only 10 to 20% of a game's pre-order share.

The running totals

Sensor Tower's GTA 6 tracker now shows more than 6.45 million copies pre-ordered and over $630 million in revenue. A week earlier, the tracker stood at 6.08 million units and $594 million as of October 13, so the game is still adding roughly 370,000 pre-orders a week. Last week's pre-order spending also grew by about $4 million over the week before, so the pace is still climbing.

PlayStation has the lead. PS5 accounts for roughly 74% of digital reservations, about 4.80 million copies and $468 million, while Xbox has 1.66 million copies and $162 million. Xbox has said it is very happy with the GTA 6 pre-order numbers.

What these numbers don't show

The comparison has limits. The data covers only digital pre-orders in the United States, so it leaves out physical pre-orders and sales outside the U.S. The U.S. is the biggest market for most of the games compared, and most of them sold mainly digitally, so the comparison is still a fair one. These are also Sensor Tower's estimates, and Rockstar and Take-Two haven't confirmed any figures. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has described pre-order levels as "unprecedented and astonishing" without giving exact numbers.

What comes next

The biggest surge may still be ahead. Sensor Tower expects most pre-orders to arrive in the final week before launch, and says the total could reach 25 million, which would mean more than $2 billion in revenue before release.

For context, Modern Warfare 2 earned $800 million in its opening weekend, and GTA 6 has already passed that mark in pre-order revenue without a single copy shipped. GTA 6 launches November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, with pre-loading set to begin November 12.