Soon after it did so for its 11th week, thus entering an upper echelon of very very few games across the history of the medium to do so, GTA 5 is once again happily perched on top of the UK games sales charts. As seen on GFK for the top 40 games in terms of sales, GTA 5 ended up at #1.
Closing the week that ended on the 11th of February, the chart sees the game beat major PS4 exclusive release Nioh, which has earned praise from players and critics alike. The game is set in a fictional version of feudal Japan with fantasy elements and shares mand gameplay mechanics with the Souls series.
Other major games that this three-year old release beat include Resident Evil 7, FIFA 17 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. All this comes after the recent news that the game broke the milestone of shipping 75 million copies to retailers worldwide. Sure, that doesn't mean 75 million copies have been bought by customers, but it does show demand, and seeing as digital sales are not accounted for, you can be that at least that many have been bought in total.
This marks GTA 5's 12th week on the top of the sales charts. The game also broke the record for most sold unbundled game of all time, now beated only by titles sold together with consoles by default, such as Wii Sports. There's also no indication that this burgeoning beast of a game is slowing down. GTA 5 sold more copies in 2016 than it did in the two years before — and upward trending sales curve in the game's fourth year is a bloody anomaly, it's so unprecedented.
Now, we've written exhaustive, in-depth pieces about why this thing is so popular, and more importantly, still so popular, but shit — even that doesn't explain this. GTA 5 hitting these kinds of sales records is barely even news anymore, but we're calling it now, it will one day surpass even the bundled titles and become the best-selling video game of all time — and we're betting it won't be toppled for a very, very long time.
It will be interesting to see both GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 occupy the upper reaches of that list later this year when the latter is released. The amount of hype RDR2 is getting more or less matches the magnitude of the anticipation for GTA 5 years ago before it launched, and all this with barely any concrete info.
It's pretty clear Rockstar's upcoming Wild West adventure will be a high-seller, moving tens of millions of copies upon launch and the following weeks and months. Since GTA 5 hasn't slipped out of the top ten since it launched, ever, chances are the two titles will gleam on the list together, which will be one hell of an achievement for Rockstar Games.
GTA 5 has pretty much taken everything we know about the financial lifecycle of a video game, even counting major releases, and flipped it on its head. We wonder how long it will take before it hits its 20th week in the top lists?
