The digital gangster business is doing well.
Developer Rockstar Games, a subsidiary of publisher Take-Two Interactive, revealed today that it has shipped more than 45 million copies of Grand Theft Auto V to retailers. Nearly 10 million of that was the revamped version of the game for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which debuted almost a year after the original release. This huge number helped push Take-Two to a massive fiscal third quarter.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1654821,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"A"}']GTA V’s renewed success on PS4 and Xbox One is more proof of the huge desire that consumers have for software on the new systems. While Take-Two and other publishers have reported lower-than-expected sales on the older machines, gamers have continued spending hundreds of millions of dollars each month on new games.
Grand Theft Auto V was the No. 1 selling game on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 when it debuted on those systems in 2013. Thanks to the rerelease on the more recent consoles, it finished 2014 as the No. 4 best-selling new retail game in the U.S.
It should get another boost in March when it finally makes the leap to the PC.
While the full game of Grand Theft Auto V is selling well, the GTA Online virtual world is also making money for Take-Two. The company reported that players are spending more money on virtual currency than the publisher was originally expecting, and that played a significant part in the 64 percent year-over-year growth in digital revenue for the company.