'GTA 5' Just Had Its Most Successful Year Since Launch
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Featured Image Credit: Rockstar Games
I'm sure a lot of you have been wondering where the heck Grand Theft Auto VI is, right? It's been nearly eight years since the release of GTA V, after all, and developer Rockstar Games hasn't really said anything at all about a sequel. The closest we got was back in 2019 when reports said the long-awaited game was in "early development"... but for all we know that could mean Dan Houser doodled a logo on a napkin and went home.
While most of us more than likely want Rockstar to take all the time it needs to get GTA VI just right, there is another, more cynical/realistic explanation as to why we've gone nearly a decade without a brand-new single-player Grand Theft Auto: GTA V and its multiplayer counterpart GTA Online are still making vast, seemingly bottomless buckets of money.
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Since launching in 2013 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, GTA V has seen the kind of sustained success that most publishers could only ever dream of. Almost every year since releasing, it's remained one of the best-selling and most-played video games, helped in no small part by a constantly evolving online mode. The game saw a huge boost in 2014 when it hit PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and will likely see another massive boost later this year when it comes to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles with "expanded and enhanced content".
As successful as GTA V has been, however, you'd think we would have seen it start to slow down somewhat after eight years. Not so. In an earnings brief, Rockstar parent company Take-Two confirmed that the open-world crime game just had the best year its had since launch. That is to say, more copies of GTA V were sold this year than any other year except 2013, bringing the total number of copies sold to past 140 million worldwide. That might not be the only reason we don't have GTA VI yet, but it is absolutely one of the biggest reasons.
Take-Two believes that much of 2020's success came from the Cayo Perico Heist, GTA Online's largest update yet, and one that players can experience entirely in single-player if they want. There's also no getting around the fact that 2020 saw a lot of us stuck in our homes for long periods of time, and no open-world game quite captures the hustle and bustle of daily life like GTA V and Los Santos. I know I booted it up and strolled around the city and beach from time to time last year just to remember what it felt like.
Topics: Rockstar Games, News, Grand Theft Auto V
