Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two Interactive reveals that giving away Grand Theft Auto 5 for free helped the game to sell more paid copies. The deal, which could be redeemed on the Epic Games Store, was so popular that it crashed the store and Fortnite’s log-in servers.
Speaking during Take-Two’s earnings call for Q1 of the 2021 financial year, CEO Strauss Zelnick confirmed that the free GTA 5 Epic Games Store deal “did not come at the expense of paid sales of the title.” The game sold better during the first quarter of a financial year than it had since the game first launched in 2013. In the six weeks after the deal had ended, the game “sold more units than in the same period in any previous year.”
This huge sales growth brings GTA 5’s total sales since launch to 135 million. This is also a huge increase from May 2020, when Take-Two confirmed that GTA 5’s sales had reached 130 million copies. In 2018, it was confirmed that GTA V is the most successful entertainment product in history, having made $6 billion, and these new sales will have only helped the game to increase its lead.
The real money-maker in all this may not be sales of GTA 5, though. Zelnick also said that “recurrent consumer spending,” or microtransactions, in GTA Online outperformed the company’s forecast by 155% to set a new record. Take-Two points to the GTA Online Gerald’s Last Play update as one big reason, as it’s possible that excitement surrounding the new Contact Missions helped draw in new players and make older players spend on the game.
However, Zelnick also said that this is part of a larger trend about GTA Online’s growth. While the GTA Online Diamond Casino & Resort update was banned in some countries and was criticized as gambling by some, it did help the game to set monthly average user records.
It’s unclear whether this will be the peak of GTA 5 and GTA Online’s success. Rockstar Games has confirmed that GTA Online will be available free on PS5 for PlayStation Plus subscribers in 2021. This deal could potentially get the handful of gamers who haven’t played the game into GTA Online and spending on microtransactions.
Today, it was also confirmed that GTA Online will have some exclusive content on PS5 and Xbox Series X. It’s not known if this will be to the extent of PS4 and Xbox One, which made the PS3 and Xbox 360 version obsolete, but this could also give gamers a huge reason to buy the game or spend on it.
GTA Online is available now on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One, and will release on PS5 and Xbox Series X in 2021.
Source: Seeking Alpha
