Take-Two will not publish raw preorder numbers for Grand Theft Auto 6, chief executive Strauss Zelnick told Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, because the company cannot tell what the figures would mean. PC Gamer reported the remarks.
The publisher has called the game's pre-release sales unprecedented, and has been happy to signal that GTA 6 is already an extraordinary success. What it will not do is attach a number to that, and Zelnick's stated reason is that the volume is so far outside precedent the company does not know how to read it. The open question is whether the preorder count can be converted into an estimate of launch sales using established wisdom, or whether the game is such an outlier that the usual rules do not apply and buyers who would ordinarily wait until after release are ordering early instead.
The massive demand for preorders we've seen to date could reflect a pull forward of sales that otherwise would materialize in the fullness of time.
Because Take-Two, in Zelnick's words, simply does not know the demand curve, he said the raw numbers could potentially be misleading, and the company is keeping them to itself for now. Take-Two is publicly traded, which is what prompted the question in the first place: the count exists internally, and the publisher has chosen not to disclose it.
The next scheduled moment for the game is a full gameplay reveal, which debuts exclusively on Netflix on August 27 and then goes up on Rockstar's public YouTube channel six hours later. Asked about that arrangement, Zelnick told Bloomberg only that there is reasoning behind it and that viewers will understand more once they have watched.
None of it resolves anything for PC players. GTA 6 has no PC release date, and the launch remains console-only - a split PC Gamer notes is made more irritating by current console prices, with the PlayStation 5 Pro selling for $900.
