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Rockstar’s cowboy epic has had truly epic reach. With parent company Take-Two revealing today that the game has sold a massive 17m copies worldwide to date.
The company said that the title had ‘exceeded its sales expectations’ and that it had sold more units in its first eight days than the original title had sold in its first eight years. The first game was something of a slow-burner by Rockstar standards of course, and though it got backward compatibility support on Xbox One, it was never re-released for the current generation of hardware.
Speaking of games that were remastered, GTA V still stands head-and-shoulders above its cowboy cousin with over 100m units sold to date. Though comparing anything to GTA V is somewhat unfair. One place they are equals though is a tied Metacritic score of 97 per cent.
The online component of the game remains shadowed in mystery. Take-Two repeated that the initial public beta for Red Dead Online would come along later this month, describing it as a “new online connected experience set against the backdrop of Red Dead Redemption 2’s enormous open world.”
The new sales figure came as part of Take-Two’s latest release of financial figures – which only cover the period up to the 30th of September, and not RDR 2’s release. Despite that, it was an impressive quarter with yet more growth for digital and recurrent spending.
Digitally-delivered net revenue grew 18 per cent to $358.4 million and accounted for 73 per cent of total net revenue. With net bookings from recurrent consumer spending (that’s microtransactions) growing 28 per cent and accounting for 53% of total sales. NBA 2K 19 lead the charge in this area, along with last year’s title, and GTA Online of course.
NBA 2K19 launched on September 11th and overall booking related to the title grew by 10 per cent over last year’s game, “driven by better-than-expected growth in recurrent consumer spending”.
Digital sales of the game also grew year-on-year according to NPD figures, which contributed to the biggest launch month (in terms of value in the US) of any sports game released since it began tracking industry sales in 1995, the biggest launch of any NBA 2K series game, and the best-selling sports game of the year to date (all in the US again).
