Skip to main content

Grand Theft Auto 5 inches closer to Tetris on all-time best-sellers list

grand theft auto 5 inches closer tetris time best sellers list gta v trevor atv
Image used with permission by copyright holder

If you are a gamer and haven’t purchased a copy of Grand Theft Auto 5, don’t worry: there are plenty of copies floating around. 32.5 million, in fact. Take-Two confirmed the numbers shipped since GTA V‘s release on September 17, 2013 in its latest investor meeting. That makes it the sixth best-selling game of all time, assuming all of those copies sell.

The number only denotes the number of copies shipped and not necessarily those sold, but the game is doing well regardless. Three days after it was released, Rockstar announced that the game had already earned $1 billion – a new record. During the investor meeting, Take-Two also revealed that net revenue for the company jumped to $1.86 billion in Q3 of its 2013 fiscal year, which ran from October 2013 through the end of the year, up from $415.8 million in 2012.

Even without GTA V, it was a good quarter for Take-Two. Helped by a recent Game of the Year edition, Borderlands 2 is 2K Games’ best-selling game of all time, with 8.5 million units sold to date. WWE 2K14 also sold well after being rescued from the now-defunct THQ according to the report, although an exact number wasn’t released.

NBA 2K14 was also a huge winner for the publisher, selling more than 5 million copies on multiple platforms since launch. In total, the franchise has sold 35 million units to date.

GTA V is moving its way up the list of best-selling games. It is rapidly catching up to Tetris on the Game Boy and Game Boy Color with 35 million, Mario Kart Wii with 35.26 million, and Minecraft with 36 million. The second best-selling game of all time, Super Mario Bros. for the NES, may be a bit out of reach with 40.24 million units sold. The best-selling game of all time, Wii Sports, has moved 81.99 million. Both of those games were packaged with consoles though, which is kind of like cheating.

So far GTAV has only been released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. If it appears on PC (or rather when it appears on PC if the recent hints prove correct), that number should see a nice spike.

Editors' Recommendations

Ryan Fleming
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Ryan Fleming is the Gaming and Cinema Editor for Digital Trends. He joined the DT staff in 2009 after spending time covering…
Grand Theft Auto 6 is getting its first trailer sooner than you think
Trevor firing an assault rifle in GTA 5.

After a decades-long wait, Grand Theft Auto 6 is finally making its formal debut. Rockstar announced that the first trailer for the anticipated open-world game will drop in early December.

It's no stretch to call Grand Theft Auto 6 the most anticipated video game of all time. It's been 10 years since the mega-successful Grand Theft Auto 5 launched and fans have been itching for news on a sequel since. That impatience boiled over last year when Rockstar suffered a major security breach that saw early footage from the game leaking. Now the studio is finally ready to reveal the game on its own terms.

Read more
Grand Theft Auto V makes its surprise return to Xbox Game Pass today
A man drives away in a boat with stolen money in Grand Theft Auto 5 art.

Xbox Game Pass is kicking off July with a major surprise, as Grand Theft Auto V has returned to the service. Rockstar's sales juggernaut leads an otherwise light month for Game Pass, which brings Capcom's Exoprimal as a day-one launch.

This isn't the first time that Grand Theft Auto V has been on Game Pass. It was previously on the service circa 2021 but removed from it that August. Rockstar has a history of putting its games on Game Pass for a brief window before pulling it, as it also did with Red Dead Redemption 2.

Read more
The best GTA characters of all-time
The protagonists of GTA V pose for the camera.

Ever since the GTA franchise became what it is today with Grand Theft Auto 3, Rockstar has packed their worlds full of colorful and rich characters. While we've only been able to control male characters up until now (though that is set to change if the GTA 6 rumors are true), they have all had distinct and interesting personalities and stories. That said, sometimes it's the side characters that can steal the show too. Looking back at the entire series, we've come up with our picks for the best GTA characters of all time.
Carl 'CJ' Johnson -- GTA: San Andreas

Good old Carl Johnson, better known as CJ, is way more than just a meme. San Andreas was the second game in the series to really focus on character in a major way, and the team nailed it with their lead. Not only was the entire cast filled with bonafide actors, but CJ's personal story as a gang member whose mother is murdered was far more nuanced and emotional than the media would lead you to believe. The real draw was the relationship CJ had with the main antagonist Officer Tenpenny (who may or may not be mentioned later on). This game set the standard for how Rockstar would reveal more about the characters and world through casual conversation throughout the story.
Tommy Vercetti -- GTA: Vice City

Read more