Twenty-two percent more consoles sold, 43% more money coming in. That was the PlayStation 5's September in the United States, according to Circana data released on October 22 by analyst Mat Piscatella. The same day, Bloomberg ran a story with a ready-made explanation in its headline: GTA 6 had "fueled" the jump. Piscatella publicly disagreed.

It's a small spat, but it says a lot about what you can and can't read into a sales number less than a month before launch. GTA 6 arrives November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

September's numbers, before anyone spins them

Circana's "September" is a five-week window, from August 30 to October 3, 2026. Within it, according to Well Played, Twisted Voxel and N4G's write-ups of the Circana release:

  • PS5: units up 22% and dollar sales up 43% versus September 2025. It led the month on both measures.
  • Xbox Series X|S: units down 27%, the brand's worst September on record.
  • Switch 2: units down 14%.
  • Total hardware: $362 million, up 12%. Year to date: $2.91 billion, down 9%.
  • Total spending (content, hardware and accessories): $4.76 billion, down 1%. Year to date: $41.04 billion, down 3%.

On the software chart, Marvel's Wolverine came first. The PS5 exclusive launched September 15, right in the middle of the tracking period, and posted the highest launch-month dollar sales for a Sony-published game since Helldivers 2 in February 2024. Its limited-edition DualSense was the month's best-selling accessory in both units and dollars. Second place went to NBA 2K27, which is now the best-selling game of 2026 in the US, ahead of Resident Evil Requiem.

Bloomberg's take and Circana's pushback

Bloomberg's story (the URL sums up the thesis: "Grand Theft Auto VI fuels 22% jump in Sony PlayStation 5 sales") ties the PS5's rise to people getting ready for GTA 6. We couldn't get past the paywall, so what we know about it comes from the headline and from outlets that covered it.

Piscatella answered on Bluesky. As quoted by GTA Boom, he wrote that "the data suggest to me that Marvel's Wolverine was the primary driver of the PS5 increase in September," with NBA 2K27 and GTA VI "likely playing roles." Then he asked the question that breaks the single-cause story: if GTA 6 is also coming to Xbox Series, why did Xbox drop 27% that same month? In his words: "So either GTA was not the reason for the PS5 bump, or people don't know it's also coming out on Xbox Series."

It matters who's talking here. Piscatella has access to Circana's weekly data, which isn't public; Bloomberg is working from the same monthly figure as everyone else. His original Bluesky post didn't load for us, so the quotes above are the ones GTA Boom published.

Why dollars rose almost twice as fast as units

A quick calculation helps. If units rose 22% and revenue rose 43%, the average PS5 sold went for roughly 17% more than a year earlier (1.43 ÷ 1.22 ≈ 1.17). That math is ours, based on Circana's percentages.

GTA Boom puts the gap down to two things: the console's price increases over the past year and strong sales of the pricier PS5 Pro. Neither has anything directly to do with GTA 6. As we read it, that backs up Piscatella's point: a good chunk of the dollar "jump" is price, not necessarily new buyers.

So GTA 6 had nothing to do with it?

It probably played a part, and Piscatella doesn't deny it. The game costs $80, runs only on PS5 and Xbox Series, and Rockstar and Sony have gone out of their way to tie the launch to PlayStation: the launch trailer opens on the PS5 logo, and a joint PlayStation Blog post back in June said the game plays best on Sony's console. Some people surely bought a PS5 in September with November in mind. Nobody can measure how many.

The weakness of the "it was GTA" theory is the control group the market hands you. Xbox gets the same game on the same day, and it just had its worst September ever. If anticipation for GTA 6 were the main driver, you'd expect some spillover on the other side, and there wasn't any. There are other possible reasons for Xbox's slide (pricing, no big first-party release that month), but none of them help Bloomberg's case.

This isn't the first time a stray number has become a PS5-versus-Xbox GTA 6 headline. In June, IGN affiliate-link click data showing 8 PS5 pre-orders for every Xbox one went viral as if it were sales data. Microsoft responded, according to GTA Boom, that it didn't represent actual pre-order data and that it was seeing record orders on Xbox, without giving figures. Neither company has released platform pre-order totals to this day. What exists are estimates, like Sensor Tower's 6.45 million digital pre-orders.

A market that isn't exactly booming

The backdrop is a soft market. In August, Circana recorded the weakest August for console sales since 2013, and total game spending is still down for 2026. September was good for PS5, but the market as a whole still spent 1% less than a year earlier.

There's also a neat detail in second place. NBA 2K27 is published by 2K, a Take-Two label, and Take-Two also owns Rockstar. So before GTA 6 is even out, Take-Two already has the best-selling game of the year in the US.

What about Brazil?

Circana only tracks the US market, and none of the sources we read had equivalent September console data for Brazil. There's no way to say whether the same thing happened there.

For anyone deciding what to buy, the practical picture hasn't changed: at launch, GTA 6 is PS5 and Xbox Series X|S only, with no PC version (the latest reports point to PC in the first quarter of 2027, unconfirmed by Rockstar). Digital preload opens November 12.

The real test is November

September belonged to Wolverine; GTA 6 doesn't arrive until the third week of November. The figure that will show the game's real effect on hardware is November's, and based on Circana's current cadence (September landed on October 22), it should come out around the end of December. That's our projection, not an announced date. Until then, any headline crediting GTA 6 for a month without GTA 6 deserves some skepticism.