Grand Theft Auto V Is The Highest Grossing Title In Any Media Of All Time

That means that not only is Grand Theft Auto V the top-selling video game of all time, but its $6 billion in revenue and counting puts it ahead of any movie, book, or album that you could name in terms of sales. To cite two obvious examples, Star Wars and Gone with the Wind both pulled in over $3 billion in 2018 dollars during their respective box office runs, making them two of the most popular films ever released. But even if you included revenue from home video and streaming, they still wouldn’t really come close to GTA V’s $6 billion in sales. According to Cowen analyst Doug Creutz, success like that is like a lightning strike: The reference to Mario Brothers only makes sense if you count sales figures for Nintendo’s popular character as a franchise total, since no single title featuring Mario has ever come close to $6 billion in revenue. Grand Theft Auto V’s success can be attributed to many factors outside of the fluky nature of popularity. It is by all critical accounts a fantastic game that players can continue to play for years, even purchasing a new version of it for their upgraded consoles (which in itself has contributed to its huge sales numbers). It’s also able to be continually tweaked and updated by its developers at Rockstar Games, something that doesn’t apply to blockbuster movies. And then there’s the infamy factor, which comes from the game’s prodigious sexual and violent content, which probably doesn’t hurt. Creutz guesses, though, that no matter how hard game makers try to duplicate these factors, it probably won’t create another success of this magnitude again: Speaking of Thriller, the best selling album of all time has sold as many as 66 million copies worldwide, far fewer than Grand Theft Auto V’s 90 million.