Another quarter, another Take-Two investor call, another sales milestone. Really, none of us are surprised at this anymore, right?
When we covered Grand Theft Auto 5 hitting 75 million copies after the last call, we said that it will easily hit 80 before the next one, and lo and behold... This means that the game has sold at least five million copies since February — some games don't sell half of that in their entire shelf-life.
The investor call did bring to light a number of interesting metrics since this was the Q4 call closing the fiscal year.
Strauss Zelnick revealed that in spite of the recent proliferation of digital distribution, 75% of GTA 5 sales are physical copies. This means that with digital copies added, GTA 5 has sold almost 107 million copies since it was released in 2013. Finally, the number of copies sold has surpassed the number of people living in Germany — the next milestone will be Russia with 142 million.
The title continues to attract and delight new audiences, especially as the installed base of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One expands further. What's driving this is that consumers love this title and want more of it.
For comparison, Civilisation 6 has nearly sold 2 million, Mafia 3 hit 5 million and NBA 2K17 has become the company's highest selling sports game with 8 million. This puts into perspective just how much of an overpowering mainstream juggernaut GTA 5 has become over the years.
What's more, it's still growing. The past fiscal year has shown a marked increase in sales for GTA 5, and we don't see why that trend would change in the next 12 months, particuarly with the recent news that Red Dead Redemption 2 has been delayed. Excluding launch year, GTA 5 has progressively sold more and more each consecutive year.
Grand Theft Auto 5 has also come out as the company's single most profitable thing, period. It accounts for the majority of revenue not only in the quarter but in the entire fiscal year. It contributed most to recurrent player spending and pushed up catalog title revenue to over 50% of the company's bookings. This means that actual game sales brought in the most money, as opposed to business deals and DLC, amongst other items.
It seems there really is no stopping GTA 5 until the next game in the franchise is released. Let's gun for 90 million by the time of the next investor call!
