Red Dead Redemption 2’s total sales hit 45 million since the game released in 2018.
VIEW GALLERY – 2 IMAGES
Nearly four years after launch, Red Dead Redemption 2 has achieved powerful sales figures across all platforms. As of June 30, 2022 during Take-Two Interactive’s Q1 FY23 period, Rockstar’s cowboy epic has sold 45 million copies combined across digital and physical channels.
These gains are up 1 million units quarter-over-quarter and 7 million units year-over-year, and continue RDR2’s trends of selling 1 million units between Q4 and Q1 periods. These sales may punctuate a sunsetting of Red Dead franchise content for some years to come; Rockstar has effectively stopped updating Red Dead Online with new meaningful content so it can focus almost exclusively on Grand Theft Auto 6, and RDR2’s campaign is practically set in stone with no expansions in sight.
That being said, Take-Two Interactive still expects Red Dead Online to be a meaningful contributor to its annual net bookings. Red Dead Online delivers microtransaction revenues through live service purchases and has, to a lesser extent, buffered TTWO’s yearly digital revenues.
“We now expect to deliver net bookings of $5.8 billion to $5.9 billion. Our assumptions take into consideration some shifts in our pipeline for the year, as well as movement in foreign exchange rates and the uncertain macroeconomic backdrop. The largest contributors to net bookings are expected to be NBA 2K, Grand Theft Auto Online and Grand Theft Auto V, Empires & Puzzles, Rollic’s hyper casual mobile portfolio, Toon Blast, and Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online. 45% Zynga, which includes our former T2 mobile titles, 37%, 2K; 17%, Rockstar Games; and 1%, Private Division.”
Grand Theft Auto V has shipped nearly 170 million copies worldwide across physical channels, continuing the game’s incremental monthly growth.
VIEW GALLERY – 3 IMAGES
Even after 9 years with releases on 3 console generations, GTA V still isn’t slowing down. Take-Two Interactive has confirmed GTA V has sold-in nearly 170 million copies worldwide. Total franchise sales are now at 380 million, so GTA V makes up 44% of total GTA sales.
GTA V has sold copies of these entire franchises:
Assassin’s Creed (155 million+)
Final Fantasy (165 million+)
Resident Evil (127 million)
Monster Hunter (84 million)
There’s two noticeable trends that arise from this data: GTA V has sold 5 million copies per quarter for six quarters in a row, and the PS5/Xbox Series X/S re-releases have not boosted game sales.
It’s also worth mentioning that the GTA trilogy remaster seems to have totally fizzled out in terms of sales. The trilogy remaster collection launched with a mighty 10 million units sold, but controversy has significantly affected continued sales of the game.
Rockstar Games will continue adding new GTA Online content to supplement GTA V as it works on the next major Grand Theft Auto game, which may release in its FY24 period.
Physical sales of the controversial GTA trilogy remaster collection have bombed for the second quarter in a row, Take-Two Interactive’s reports indicate.
VIEW GALLERY – 2 IMAGES
The GTA Definitive Edition remaster sold a whopping 10 million copies at launch, but our tracking shows the game has significantly fizzled out over the past two quarters. There’s a big reason for this: The game is largely regarded as a failure among Rockstar fans due to graphical issues, technical hiccups, and a disastrously controversial launch that has soured public opinion.
The sales figures reflect this sentiment. According to Take-Two Interactive’s recent investor’s presentation, the GTA franchise has sold-in 380 million copies to date. A quick bit of math offers figures for the trilogy collection. GTA franchise shipments increased by 5 million units, and total franchise shipments also increased by 5 million. This squeezes the trilogy out of the equation with sub 1 million sales.
Remember that these are sell-in numbers, or physical shipments, and do not include digital sales. It’s possible the trilogy has made a lot more sales digitally, however recent GTA franchise revenues show a slump back to pre-pandemic levels.
A lawsuit against Activision Blizzard was dismissed last month because, according to a judge in the Southern California District Court where the complaint was brought, the plaintiffs didn’t play enough Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare to make an informed case against the maligned publisher. For eleven in Activision Blizzard’s many contentious legal battlesthings ended smoothly.
According to to report by a litigation associate at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (who tipped Kotaku off), Activision Blizzard was sued in November 2021 by Brooks Entertainment, Inc., a California-based company specializing in film and TV production and other forms of entertainment. However, Kotaku couldn’t find an official website for the company. Brooks Entertainment and its CEO, Shon Brookswho describes himself as an inventor, claim they hold the trademarks for the financial mobile games Save One Bank and Stock Pickers. It should be noted that Kotaku couldn’t verify the existence of these games, either.Regardlessall three of these entities, alongside Activision Blizzard and 2016’s Infinite Warfarewere at the center of the lawsuit.
In October 2021, Brooks Entertainment alleged Activision ripped off intellectual property from both Save One Bank and stock pickeras well as the identity of its owner, in Infinite Warfare. To be more specific, the complaint asserted the “main character” for the 2016 first-person shooter, Sean Brooks, was based on the company’s CEO and that all three games had “scripted battle scenes that take place in a high fashion couture shopping center mall.” There were other similarities, too, but these claims were the crux of the complaint.
But if you’ve played just an hour or so of Infinite Warfare, you’d know this is all wrong. For one, the main character isn’t Corporal Sean Brooks at all but rather his squadmate CommanderNick Reyes, a space marine who becomes the captain of the game’s primary militia. Moreover, while there is a scripted battle scene in a shopping mall, it takes place in far future Geneva, one of many in-game locations, and Sean Brooks ain’t in it. You play as Reyes the entire time.
In January 2022, Activision’s counsel wrote to Brooks Entertainment’s counsel that the complaint “contain[ed] serious factual misrepresentations and errors, and that the claims set forth therein are both factually and legally frivolous.” If the company didn’t withdraw the lawsuit, Activision would file Rule 11 sanctions, penalties requiring the plaintiff to pay a fine for submitting dubious or improper arguments without substantial—or, for that matter, accurate—evidentiary support. And that’s exactly what happened in March 2022, when Activision filed its motions for sanctions against Brooks Entertainment, saying the plaintiffs failed to play Infinite Warfare and provided inaccurate filings.
G/O Media may get a commission
20% Off
Logitech G502 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse
Gaming! Uses exclusive ultra-fast wireless tech to make sure your mouse is faster than you are, can be sued alongside special software for highly-customizable performance, and has 11 buttons to mess around with, a hyper-fast scroll wheel, and RGB lighting too .
The Southern California District Court accepted Activision’s motions on July 12, dismissed Brook Entertainment’s lawsuit with prejudice (meaning the claim cannot be refiled in that court), and ordered the plaintiff’s counsel to compensate the troubled publisher for the money and time it wasted. In its conclusion, the court said the plaintiff failed to conduct a thorough and reasonable inquiry into the relevant facts about the game before filing the suit.
“Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is a first-person shooter game, not first- and third-person as alleged, and Sean Brooks does not conduct a scripted battle scene in a high fashion couture shopping mall,” the court said in its ruling in favor of Activision. “Plaintiff’s counsel could have easily verified these facts prior to filing the factually baseless Complaint, just as the Court easily verified them within the first hour and a half of playing the game.”
Kotaku reached out to Activision Blizzard for comment.
Richard Hoeg, a lawyer who specializes in digital and video game law, told Kotaku that unprotectable concepts like the names of people used in fictional entertainment are pretty difficult to copyright and claim infringement upon.
“It’s hard to say why the suit was brought up,” Hoeg said. “Certainly if a suit gets kicked out *with sanctions* it wasn’t a very good one in the first place. It might be simply hubris or it may have been counsel encouraging a suit against a well-resourced party. The suit itself says [Brooks Entertainment] pitched a game to Activision between 2010 [and] 2015. That all said, the infringement lawsuit is awful, alleging infringement on such unprotectable concepts as: ‘Shon Brooks navigates through both exotic and action-packed locations and Sean Brooks navigates through both exotic and action-packed locations.’”
Hoeg went on to say it’s hard getting “actual sanctions imposed on you” because that would be a level of bad lawsuit filing well above just a simple dismissal.
“The court basically finds the whole argument crazy,” Hoeg concluded. “Brooks Entertainment even included Rockstar Games for no reason (which didn’t help their cause with the judge). So, the sanctions here are Brooks Entertainment [has] to pay for Activision’s legal fees and costs.”
While things may have ended well for Activision this time, the disparaged publisher is still causing legal headaches. The company was just blasted by Devil devs for union-busting. Again. Ugh.
A new report associated with GTA 6 seems to have just confirmed a leak associated with the upcoming Grand Theft Auto game that came about all the way back in 2018. Even though Rockstar Games only just confirmed earlier this year that it is in the process of making Grand Theft Auto VI, the game itself has been in the works in some capacity for a prolonged period of time. And with that in mind, it sounds like the core of GTA 6 was first being developed as far back as four years ago.
Just a few days back, a high-profile report from Bloomberg detailed new information associated with GTA 6. Namely, the game is said to center around two protagonists, one of which will be a female. In addition to this, the setting of GTA 6 is set against the backdrop of a fictional version of Miami. Previously, though, the scope of the game was planned to be much larger and would have allowed players to travel between different cities in both North America and South America. This ended up changing though as Rockstar Games seemingly decided that this would be far too large of an undertaking.
So how does this tie in with what we heard in the past? Well, back in 2018, Inside Gaming leaked some first details about what GTA 6 might contain. At the time, it was said that Miami (or potentially Vice City) would be the setting for the title and also suggested that locations in South America would be traversable as well. At the moment, fans didn’t know whether or not this leak was accurate, but this week’s new report seems to have corroborated that this was all very much true. As such, Rockstar Games has been working on GTA 6 in some manner dating all the way back to 2018.
All of this just goes to show that even though we often hear a lot of rumors related to Grand Theft Auto, sometimes, those leaks end up being spot-on. It remains to be seen if any other rumors or reports tied to Grand Theft Auto VI will end up ringing true in the long run, but it’s fascinating to look back on this information in retrospect.
GTA 6 still doesn’t have a release window of any sort, but the game is said to likely not be releasing until 2024 at the earliest. Whenever we get new information on the project, we’ll be sure to keep you in the loop here on ComicBook.com.
