Red Dead Redemption 2 Won’t Sell as Well as GTA V: Take-Two

Red Dead Redemption 2’s release date has been pushed back to 2018, but that hasn’t stopped rampant speculation on what to expect. The latest bout, now fuelled by comments of Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two which imply that the Wild West open-world adventure could have a bigger online component than expected.

“Obviously we know what Rockstar tends to do. And Rockstar’s activities have been transformed by Grand Theft Auto Online,” Strauss Zelnick said to Games Industry.

Though fans of Red Dead Redemption would expect Take-Two to have it succeed as well as GTA does, that doesn’t seem to be the case. To put it into perspective, 2008’s GTA IV shipped 25 million units in five years with GTA V shipping 80 million. The first Red Dead Redemption sold 15 million. Zelnick was quick to set expectations around Red Dead Redemption 2.

"I don't make assumptions like that," Zelnick said. "What the team is doing is trying to make the best possible game they can, and if they succeed... Look, the reason, in my opinion, why GTA V has sold 80m units, and GTA Online had another record year 3-and-a-half years since its release, is because it stands alone in the generation. In every prior generation, there have been other titles that have clustered around GTA from a quality point-of-view. That's clearly not the case now. If you are over 17 and you have a new generation console, you have GTA. Otherwise we wouldn't have shipped 80m units. Can any other title achieve that? It seems unlikely. Do we have incredibly high hopes for Red Dead? We do. But we are not putting it in the context of GTA."