Grand Theft Auto V hits 33M units sold, or almost $2B in retail sales

Take-Two Interactive Software reported today that it has sold more than 33 million copies of Grand Theft Auto V since its launch last September. That means the game has generated an estimated $1.98 billion in retail sales.

Take-Two said that GTA V was the best-selling console game in 2013 in North America, Latin America, and Europe. The open world mayhem game was the fastest to reach $1 billion in sales in video game history, said Strauss Zelnick, chairman of New York-based Take-Two.

Take-Two’s Rockstar Games developed the game over five years at an estimated cost of $260 million. Rockstar launched Grand Theft Auto Online in October, and then it proceeded to release a number of updates for it, including The Business Update, The High Life Update, and The Valentines Day Massacre Special.

It has also released Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for Kindle, Android, and Windows Phone devices.

Of the $1.98 billion, not all of the amount goes to Take-Two, as retailers take their cut. But the sales are impressive, considering that Take-Two generated just $2.4 billion in revenues during its fiscal year.

In an analyst call, Zelnick said that GTA Online was the biggest contributor to digital sales and revenues from it were unexpectedly high. He said Rockstar provided tools for gamers to develop their own content, and 7 million pieces of content have been created to date.

Zelnick said that Rockstar is hard at work on unannounced next-generation console games that will be launched during the current fiscal year. He said that Rockstar will be about 45 percent of this year’s revenues, but he declined to say what Rockstar’s new games are. He noted that Rockstar has not announced whether it will present any games at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) trade show in June. Rockstar usually doesn’t exhibit at E3.