No new game since 2018. No native PS5 version for Red Dead Redemption 2. An online mode that went quiet years ago. And yet, Rockstar Games just walked into the history books — again. As of May 21, 2026, Rockstar officially holds two of the three top spots on the best-selling video games of all time list, and the only thing standing between them and the top is Minecraft. Let that sink in for a second.
The Numbers That Made History
Take-Two Interactive dropped its Q4 FY2026 earnings report on May 21, 2026, and buried inside the financial results was a milestone that deserves way more attention than it’s getting. Red Dead Redemption 2 has now sold over 85 million copies worldwide — up from 82 million just three months prior. That figure officially pushes it past Nintendo’s Wii Sports (around 82.9 million lifetime) and into the number three spot on the all-time list.
Here’s what the top of that list looks like right now:
- #1 — Minecraft: 350 million copies sold
- #2 — Grand Theft Auto 5: 230 million+ copies sold
- #3 — Red Dead Redemption 2: 85 million copies sold
- #4 — Wii Sports: ~82.9 million copies sold
Two of those top three games were made by the same studio. One studio. Two games. Both sitting above Wii Sports, Tetris, Mario Kart 8, and every other game ever made. That’s a level of commercial dominance that no other developer in the history of the medium has achieved.
RDR2 Just Had Its Best Sales Year Since Launch
The thing about Red Dead Redemption 2 hitting 85 million isn’t just the number — it’s how it got there. CEO Strauss Zelnick specifically noted on the earnings call that the game achieved its highest level of annual unit sales since its launch year. Not its best quarter — its best full year. Almost eight years after release, a game with no native PS5 upgrade, no major content updates beyond a surprise 2025 patch, and an online mode that’s been effectively on life support since 2022 just posted its most impressive sales performance since it launched in October 2018.
Between March and May 2026 alone, RDR2 moved roughly 3 million additional copies — which is, somewhat absurdly, about what it sells every quarter on average. The Red Dead series as a whole has now hit nearly 115 million copies sold when including the first game, which has been getting a quiet sales boost following its port to modern platforms.
The timing here isn’t hard to read. GTA fever is at an all-time high heading into the November 19 launch of GTA 6, and a lot of players who haven’t touched Rockstar’s back catalogue are clearly going back and picking up the western masterpiece they skipped. RDR2 also returned to the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog this week, available for free to Extra and Premium tier subscribers, which will only keep the momentum going.
GTA 5 at 230 Million — Still Selling Like It Just Came Out
While everyone’s focused on RDR2’s climb, Grand Theft Auto 5 continues to be one of the most baffling commercial phenomena in entertainment history. The game launched in September 2013 — over twelve years ago. It has been released across three console generations. And it still moves roughly 5 million copies every quarter, consistently. As of the latest figures, GTA 5 sits at over 230 million copies sold, making it the second best-selling game of all time behind only Minecraft.
To put that in some perspective: the Nintendo Switch — a piece of hardware that became one of the best-selling consoles ever made — has shipped around 153 million units over its lifetime. GTA 5 has outsold that as a single game. It has generated over $8.6 billion in total revenue, making it arguably the most financially successful entertainment product ever created, across any medium. Not just gaming. Any medium.
And this is all before GTA 6 adds its own chapter to the story.
What Does This Mean for GTA 6?
Take-Two’s projections for fiscal year 2027 — which is largely anchored to the GTA 6 launch window — put the company at $8 to $8.2 billion in net bookings. The publisher has confirmed GTA 6 is launching on November 19, 2026, for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, with Zelnick reaffirming there will be no delays. Marketing is expected to ramp up significantly over the summer.
No pricing has been officially announced for GTA 6 yet, but with a $100 price point being widely discussed across the industry for premium releases, Take-Two’s revenue projections suggest they’re expecting a massive opening. Pre-orders are already live and the hype around this game makes the Black Ops 6 and even Elden Ring launch cycles look tame in comparison.
Will GTA 6 eventually climb to the top of this same all-time list? Almost certainly — just not immediately. Even at launch, it would take years of consistent quarterly sales to approach what GTA 5 or Minecraft have built up over more than a decade. But the trajectory is clear, and if GTA 6 becomes the cultural moment that its predecessors did, Rockstar could theoretically have three games in the all-time top five within the next decade.
The RDR2 PS5 Upgrade Question
The elephant in the room that the RDR2 community keeps coming back to — and rightfully so — is the complete absence of a native PS5 and Xbox Series X/S version of the game. Red Dead Redemption 2 runs via backwards compatibility on current-gen consoles, and while it plays reasonably well, it’s missing the optimisations that a proper current-gen build would bring — things like higher resolution, improved frame rates, faster load times, and potentially even raytracing.
The fact that RDR2 just clocked 85 million sales without a PS5 upgrade is both impressive and a little frustrating for fans who’ve been waiting on it. The counter-argument from Take-Two’s perspective is obvious — why invest in a current-gen port when it’s already selling this well without one? But with GTA 6 coming and all eyes back on Rockstar, there’s a reasonable case that a PS5 native version of RDR2 alongside a GTA 6 launch would be an extremely smart commercial move. Rockstar hasn’t commented. The community keeps hoping.
A Studio Unlike Any Other
It’s worth stepping back and acknowledging what Rockstar has actually pulled off here. The studio has released exactly two games in the past thirteen years — GTA 5 in 2013 and Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018 — and those two games now sit at #2 and #3 on the best-selling games of all time list. No annual franchises, no live service pivots beyond GTA Online, no flood of sequels or spin-offs. Just two games, both of which were so good and so enduring that they’ve been selling consistently for years without any real effort.
GTA Online has obviously played a major role in keeping GTA 5 commercially alive, but Red Dead Online essentially stopped receiving updates in 2022 and the game still added 6 million sales between September 2025 and March 2026. The quality of the single-player experience is doing that work entirely on its own. That’s the kind of staying power that most developers can only dream about.
When GTA 6 launches this November, Rockstar will have a third shot at making history. Based on the last two attempts, it’s hard to bet against them.
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