GTA 6 sales forecasts: six numbers, six different windows

Six named analysts put a number on Grand Theft Auto VI sales between May 22 and June 24, 2026, and those numbers run from 30 million units to nearly 60 million. The spread looks enormous. It collapses the moment you read the window each one covers: six weeks on sale in one case, twelve months in another. Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar’s publisher, has never published a unit forecast at all.

The six, ordered by the clock each one is running on.

Analyst	Forecast	Window covered	Date
Rhys Elliott, Alinea Analytics	30 million, then 50 million	the first week, then heading into 2027	June 24, 2026
Piers Harding-Rolls, Ampere Analysis	30 to 35 million	the end of calendar 2026, roughly 6 weeks	June 24, 2026
Cory Carpenter, JPMorgan	mid-30 millions	the year ending March 31, 2027	May 22, 2026
Matthew Cost, Morgan Stanley	about 40 million units	that same fiscal year, a little over 4 months on sale	May 24, 2026
Joost van Dreunen, Aldora	38 million and just over $3 billion	the first 12 months	June 24, 2026
Gareth Sutcliffe, Enders Analysis	more than 50 million, closing in on 60 million	year one	June 24, 2026

Lined up shortest window first, the six rows say something the headline range of 30 to 60 does not. Ampere Analysis expects 30 to 35 million in about six weeks, Aldora 38 million in a year. Of those two, the lower number is the more aggressive call. And Morgan Stanley’s 40 million, quoted nearly everywhere as an annual figure, covers a fiscal year that closes on March 31, 2027, four months and twelve days after launch.

The top of the range belongs to Enders Analysis. Gareth Sutcliffe expects sales “in excess of 50 million units in year one, possibly closing in on 60 million”, and calls that outcome “unparalleled”. Alinea Analytics works from the installed base instead, the consoles already sitting in players’ homes: Rhys Elliott argues that doubling GTA 5’s launch on “a current base of 90 million-plus PS5s, before you even count Xbox Series, isn’t a stretch for the most anticipated launch in the industry’s history”.

What Take-Two’s own guidance implies

The publisher gives no units. It gives a dollar figure: Net Bookings of $8.0 to $8.2 billion for fiscal 2027, guidance reiterated on August 7, 2026 and tied to the November 19 launch. Set against the $6.72 billion booked in the year ended March 31, 2026, that is a step of $1.28 to $1.48 billion, or 19 to 22 percent growth.

That is the arithmetic Cory Carpenter ran backwards at JPMorgan on May 22, 2026, and it is where his mid-30 millions comes from. He wrote that the guidance “strikes us as rather conservative”. Joost van Dreunen read the same number the same day as a chief executive hedging: Zelnick “knows he has a monster hit on his hands and is therefore doing the fiscally responsible thing by tempering expectations”.

Zelnick will not put a figure on any of it. Asked about pre-orders on August 7, he called their level “unprecedented and astonishing”, then added that “we just don’t know how it’ll translate into sales”. Take-Two has published no pre-order total since orders opened on June 25, 2026, and on July 16 Newzoo consultant Ronan Patrick killed a claim that had run since June: “GTA 6 has not done a billion dollars in preorders 21 weeks out. This is absurd.”

The next official word comes on November 9, 2026, ten days before launch, when Take-Two reports its fiscal second quarter “after the market close”, with an analyst call at “4:30 p.m. Eastern Time”. That quarter closed on September 30 and contains no GTA 6 sales: Take-Two guided it to a net loss of $140 to $157 million.

One boundary sits under every number here: that $8.0 to $8.2 billion rests on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S alone, since no PC version has been announced, and on a standard edition at $79.99 and an Ultimate at $99.99, the only prices Rockstar has published.

The only pre-order totals in circulation come from outside the company. Sensor Tower counted 4.3 million on August 13, 2026, 77% of them on PlayStation 5, then 4.6 million in an estimate GamesIndustry.biz published on August 28. Notebookcheck reads the same panel at 4.55 million before the August 27 broadcast. The next reading, reported by Insider Gaming on October 20, 2026, puts pre-orders at 6.45 million copies and $630 million: 4.8 million and $468 million on PS5, 1.66 million and $162 million on Xbox. That is 74% for PlayStation, three points down on August, and the report does not say whether boxed copies are counted. All of it comes from a proprietary panel and statistical modelling, not from a sales ledger.

Measured against the lowest of the six forecasts, Alinea Analytics’ 30 million in week one, 6.45 million is 21.5% of the target with 30 days left before November 19, 2026. The count grew by 1.85 million in the 53 days after August 28.

The only yardstick anyone has dates from 2013

Every forecast here is built on GTA 5, because nothing else exists to build on. That game sold 11 to 15 million at launch in 2013, the base Alinea uses, and roughly 29 million in its first month, the comparison Morgan Stanley leans on. It passed $1 billion in revenue in three days, and Take-Two’s investor presentation of August 7, 2026 now places it above 230 million units.