GTA 6 will double GTA 5 and make $3.2 billion in its first year, analysts say – "The pent-up demand is greater than anything we’ve seen before”

The impending release of GTA 6 could see developer Rockstar outdo the already record-setting sales of GTA 5 with over $3 billion in revenue in its first year and some $1 billion from pre-orders alone, analysts at DFC Intelligence predict, with other experts calling the hunger for the game virtually peerless.

Speaking with the Financial Times (as VGC spotted), DFC analysts agree that GTA 6, the long-awaited sequel to the best-selling console and PC-only game of all time, will end up being the biggest entertainment launch of the year, and indeed ever. The group predicts upwards of $3.2 billion in revenue in the game's first year, or double what GTA 5 managed within the same period. (GTA 5, with GTA Online included, has generated over $8 billion total by most estimates.)

Yoshio Osaki of IDG Consulting concurred with the overall outlook. "We think it’s going to be one of the biggest entertainment launches in history, not just in games but for all of media," he told the Financial Times. "The pent-up demand is greater than anything we’ve seen before."

The sheer power GTA 6 holds over the games industry in 2025 and its fiscal outlook has been thoroughly explored by analysts and experts. Circana's Mat Piscatella, who previously called GTA 6 possibly the most important game to ever release, told GamesRadar+ that 2025's one-two punch of GTA 6 and the still-unannounced Nintendo Switch 2 is almost unprecedented.

"I don't remember a year like this where so much of what's going to happen is focused on just two products entering the market, right?" he reiterates. "A lot of eggs in the basket, so to speak. And we'll have to see how that goes. So it's really tough until we get confirmation about when these things are showing up, and we start seeing the results about just how good or bad 2025 is going to look from a video game world perspective."

One way this kind of success and activity can ripple out across the games industry is by stoking the market and attracting funding and investment, potentially fueling opportunities at other levels of development.

Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Rockstar owner Take-Two, has been reserved but confident in comments on the game, recently reiterating that GTA 6 will be "worth waiting for" and promising something that players "just haven't seen before."

With games like GTA 6 and Monster Hunter Wilds set to stuff 2025, Helldivers 2 lead says "it was super good we launched when we did."