GTA 5 sold over 160M copies, plus news on the GTA Trilogy and Online's success (Take-Two earnings call)

Take Two's recent earnings call has revealed plenty of information on GTA 5, the GTA Trilogy, and GTA Online's recent success and future.

Their third-quarter results indicated that the GTA Trilogy was one of Take-Two's most successful games, along with other games like:

• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Red Dead Online
• NBA 2K22

Naturally, GTA 5 also did financially well for the company:

"Sales of Grand Theft Auto V continue to be strong, and to date, the title has sold-in more than 160 million units worldwide."

Also, GTA Online matched "2020's record-setting monthly audience size."

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GTA 5 sold over 160M copies, plus news on the GTA Trilogy and Online's success from Take-Two

GTA 5 is the best-selling Grand Theft Auto game by a large margin (Image via Rockstar Games)

There is an interesting statistic on the game's success from Strauss Zelnick:

"Since its launch in 2013, Grand Theft Auto V has remained within the top five best-selling titles for each calendar year across the Americas, including the U.S., and over 50 major territories across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific."

Aside from GTA 5 selling over 160M copies, there isn't much news on it or the Expanded and Enhanced Edition. One analyst asks if the game is out yet, while Karl Slatoff states it isn't. There is also no news on the price model for the upcoming GTA 5 port.

GTA 5 Expanded and Enhanced is still slated to arrive on March 15, 2022, for the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. PS5 players get access to GTA Online's standalone version for free during the first three months, as was previously reported.

Strauss Zelnick also reminds people that GTA 5 players from the PS4 and Xbox One can transfer their single-player and multiplayer progress into the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S ports. He also covers some important parts related to expectations regarding future net bookings, which involves GTA 5:

"The largest contributors to net bookings are expected to be NBA 2K, Grand Theft Auto Online and Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online, Borderlands 3 and Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy -- The Definitive Edition. We expect the net bookings breakdown from our label to be roughly 50% 2K, 40% Rockstar Games and 10% Private Division and TT Mobile Games."

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GTA Trilogy's success

GTA Trilogy is remaster of three beloved games (Image via Rockstar Games)

Despite the fact that the game was heavily panned upon its release, the GTA Trilogy has continued to sell exceptionally well:

"...with the title significantly exceeding our commercial expectations."

There is no specific sales number for the GTA Trilogy like there was for GTA 5. The upcoming mobile release dates are still scheduled for the first half of 2022, with the only other newsworthy GTA Trilogy stories coming from some analysts' questions.

The GTA Trilogy will continue to get patches (Image via Rockstar Games)

First, one analyst asks if the GTA Trilogy still has many bugs and if future QA will do a better job for the next games. Strauss Zelnick gives a generic answer for the latter part, but he does provide a more interesting answer regarding the games' bugs:

"And I think The Trilogy was an example of that. And the title was launched with some issues. We've addressed many of them. There are more fixes to come."

The old version of the GTA Trilogy had an infamous problem with rain (Image via Rockstar Games)

Hence, GTA Trilogy fans can expect more updates in the future. The second analyst's question regards the GTA Trilogy's price model on mobile. Strauss Zelnick merely says:

"So we haven't discussed pricing for Trilogy for mobile yet."

The final mention of the GTA Trilogy comes from a question from a J.P. Morgan analyst regarding the quality of future games and whether this game was an isolated case. Strauss Zelnick gives an answer that suggests that they will continue doing things in the way they're currently doing it:

"We've had precious few quality lapses at this company. So any time that we've fallen short from a quality point of view, it has been an isolated case, and we aim to keep it that way. However, we're not changing our business model."

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GTA Online continues to dominate

The Contract DLC was very well-received (Image via Rockstar Games)

The Take-Two earnings call goes through GTA Online's success and some of the content from The Contract and minor aspects like the game's "deep story elements." However, the more relevant information comes from the game's recurrent consumer spending:

"NBA 2K and Grand Theft Auto Online were the largest contributors to recurrent consumer spending..."

Like with GTA 5's Expanded and Enhanced port, Take-Two is optimistic about GTA Online's success on current-gen consoles. Regarding their current quarter expectations:

"So for RCS this quarter, NBA 2K22 outperformed, as well as Red Dead Online, and GTA Online was in line with our strong expectations."

Its high recurrent consumer spending comes from Shark Cards (Image via Rockstar Games)

Lanie Goldstein also mentions how other mobile games performed below their expectations, so Rockstar fans might be pleased to see the GTA games still being so successful.

The final aspect related to GTA Online worth mentioning from this Take-Two earnings call is that one analyst asked if it would get more single-player content after The Contract.

Strauss Zelnick essentially says that Rockstar Games is good with both single-player and multiplayer elements and that single-player content isn't dead.