GTA VI Is Now the Most Pre-Ordered Game in PlayStation and Xbox Store History

GTA VI pre-orders have officially made history. With five days left until launch, Sony and Microsoft have both confirmed that Grand Theft Auto VI is now the most pre-ordered game ever on the PlayStation Store and the Microsoft Store, and independent estimates put the total value of those pre-orders near $1 billion. No game has ever entered launch week with this much money already committed.

The numbers come from sales tracker Sensor Tower, which estimates around 9.69 million copies pre-ordered so far. That would put Rockstar's sequel ahead of Cyberpunk 2077 for the biggest pre-order total ever recorded. Sony and Microsoft have confirmed the records themselves, even though neither company has published its own exact count.

GTA VI Pre-Orders by the Numbers

The scale is easier to grasp when you stack it against the last GTA. GTA V made roughly $800 million in its first 24 hours on sale back in 2013, a record that stood for over a decade. GTA VI has already passed $1 billion in pre-orders alone, before a single copy has been played, and the average selling price tracked by Sensor Tower sits around $97. That tells you most early buyers picked the $99.99 premium edition over the $79.99 standard edition.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told Barron's this week that pre-orders keep landing far above the company's own expectations. The publisher reaffirmed the November 19 date in its latest earnings report and held its full-year bookings guidance at $8.0 to $8.2 billion, with the launch quarter alone guided at $3.35 to $3.5 billion. Nobody at Take-Two is pretending this is a normal release.

Pre-Loads Are Live, and the Download Is Huge

If you have already pre-ordered, the game is waiting for you. Pre-loads opened on November 10 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and Rockstar says the full download needs up to 212GB of free space. That is one of the largest installs of the generation, so anyone still sitting on a nearly full drive should clear room now rather than on launch night.

Rockstar has also confirmed the performance target players spent months arguing about: 30 frames per second on consoles. PS5 Pro owners get PSSR upscaling, higher-resolution textures, and exclusive advanced ray-traced shadows. Xbox players get a different perk: GTA VI arrives on Xbox Cloud Gaming at launch, streaming from 1AM ET on November 19, which means even Xbox One owners can play through the cloud at Series S settings, capped at 1080p and 30fps.

Code-in-box versions are already available for pick-up at retailers worldwide, and Rockstar reminded players on X this week that there is still time to pre-order and pre-load before Thursday. For the full rundown of what to sort out before launch day, our GTA VI launch prep guide covers storage, settings, and spoiler-proofing.

Launch Week Around the Game

Rockstar is treating November 19 like a cultural event, not just a release date. YouTube and Rockstar will run a 24-hour GTA VI livestream starting at midnight ET on launch day, with an RDCWorld pre-show at 11PM ET on November 18. Two days later, on November 21, the GTA VI Festival takes over Miami's Mana Wynwood, and the Miami Heat are hosting an A Night in Vice City event on November 18.

The launch also lands in the middle of a very different story at Rockstar. Around 1,600 of the company's UK workers are voting on union recognition right through launch week, with voting running until November 26. It is a reminder that the biggest game ever made was also one of the hardest to make, and the people who made it are still fighting for a say in how the studio runs.

What Happens on November 19

The rollout begins at midnight in each region on Thursday, November 19, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. There is no PC version at launch, and Rockstar has not announced one yet. What we know about the game itself has barely changed since our one-month-out rundown: Lucia and Jason, a modern Vice City, and the state of Leonida to explore.

The pre-order record settles one question and raises another. The first is whether GTA VI would be the biggest launch in gaming history. That is now a formality. The second is whether a game this big can actually live up to a wait this long. We find out in five days. Xbox has the full list of next week's releases, including GTA VI's November 19 slot, on Xbox Wire, and HappyGamer has the pre-load details for both consoles.