Six and a half million copies reserved a month before launch, and not one of them on a disc. That's the latest estimate from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower for GTA 6's digital pre-orders on PlayStation and Xbox as of October 18, 2026. In revenue terms it works out to roughly $630 million, net of refunds, according to XiaomiToday's write-up of the data first reported by GamesIndustry.biz.
None of this is official. Rockstar and Take-Two haven't published a pre-order count, and Sensor Tower builds its totals from its own panel and statistical modelling. Even so, it's the most consistent data series anyone has on demand for the game, and it has been updated regularly since August.
The current numbers
The platform split in the October 18 reading:
| Platform | Digital pre-orders | Estimated revenue | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| PlayStation | ~4.80 million | ~$468 million | ~74% |
| Xbox | ~1.66 million | ~$162 million | ~26% |
| Total | ~6.45 million | ~$630 million |
Five days earlier, on October 13, the same firm counted about 6.08 million pre-orders and $594 million, with 4.51 million on PlayStation and 1.57 million on Xbox — the snapshot VGTimes ran with. That's around 370,000 orders in five days, or close to 74,000 a day. The arithmetic is ours, based on the published figures, and it explains why different sites printed different totals in the same week: each grabbed a different day's snapshot.
What it was compared against
The stat that travelled furthest is the 148%. Sensor Tower lined GTA 6 up against the biggest launches of the past six years — Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022), Diablo 4, Hogwarts Legacy, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Cyberpunk 2077, God of War Ragnarök, The Last of Us Part II, Starfield and Ghost of Tsushima, plus the yet-to-release Marvel's Wolverine. Modern Warfare 2 topped that list. GTA 6 is 148% ahead of it at the same point before release.
For scale: VGTimes notes that 45 days out, Modern Warfare 2 had more than twice Diablo 4's pre-orders, and Diablo 4 was itself a huge launch. GTA 6 sits a tier above that.
There's a caveat that tends to vanish from headlines: the historical comparison only covers the United States, using digital PlayStation and Xbox pre-orders. The 6.45 million total, meanwhile, is described as worldwide in XiaomiToday's piece. Khel Now, which also covered the figures on Wednesday (October 21), says the 6.45 million were sold "in the U.S." Of the sources we read, XiaomiToday is the most careful, keeping the two apart: a worldwide digital total on one side, a US-only historical comparison on the other. That reading strikes us as the most coherent, but without access to the original report we can't be certain.
Why there have been so many totals since August
Anyone following this has seen at least four different figures. They clash less than it seems:
- About 4.6 million was Sensor Tower's estimate before An Extended Look premiered on Netflix on August 27, according to GTA Boom. Pre-orders reportedly jumped about 570% over the two days around the premiere.
- 4.38 million and $429 million comes from an Esquire India report updated on October 4. The piece doesn't say when the data was collected, and the total is lower than the pre-Netflix one — which, as we read it, points to an older reading being recycled rather than an actual drop.
- 6.08 million and $594 million is the October 13 reading.
- 6.45 million and $630 million is the October 18 reading.
The console split has shifted too. In August PlayStation held around 77% of pre-orders; now it's 74%. Xbox has gained ground, though it's still far behind.
The $100 edition has become the default
One simple division helps make sense of the revenue. $630 million over 6.45 million copies comes to nearly $98 per pre-order. The Standard Edition costs $80 in the US and the Ultimate $100. An average that close to the higher price only works if almost everyone is buying the expensive version. That's our own back-of-the-envelope maths, ignoring taxes and regional pricing, but it lines up with what Sensor Tower said back in August: around 89% of pre-orders were for the Ultimate Edition.
At the time, Sensor Tower SVP Karl Kontus told GamesIndustry.biz (as relayed by Shacknews) that "a 50 percent premium share during preorders is a great number," noting that 10–20% is typical. Shacknews pulled another line into its subhead: he had never seen a 90% premium share before.
In Brazil, the gap between editions plays out differently. The Standard Edition is R$ 449.90 and the Ultimate R$ 549.90 on the PlayStation Store and the Xbox store, prices in place since pre-orders opened on June 25 (Critical Hits). That's R$ 100 extra, about 22% over the Standard; in the US the step up is 25%. If you're choosing between them, our Standard vs Ultimate breakdown covers what's in each, and the pre-order bonus comes with both.
Does Brazil show up in the data?
Not in any of the sources we read, which break nothing down by country other than the US. There's no way to tell how many of the 6.45 million came through the Brazilian PlayStation or Microsoft stores, or how well Sensor Tower's panel covers the market there. What is clear is that the figure is digital only: physical stores and retail pre-orders are left out.
What the numbers don't tell you
Take-Two still isn't sharing figures. In August, CEO Strauss Zelnick called pre-orders "unprecedented" and said, per Shacknews, that "we just don't believe in claiming victory before it occurs." Also missing from the picture:
- PC, which has no version at launch. The most widely reported window is Q1 2027, according to sources who spoke to GamesBeat, with no confirmation from Rockstar.
- Launch-day and launch-week sales, which usually dwarf pre-orders. Piper Sandler projects more than 48 million copies in launch week, a figure we've looked at before; Khel Now also cites a Newzoo estimate of $5.2 billion in first-week revenue. These are forecasts, not results.
The next concrete milestone is digital pre-loading, which opens on November 12. Sensor Tower should publish more readings before then, and each one is likely to come in higher than the last.