No one doubted for a second that Red Dead Redemption 2 would have an absolutely massive launch in terms of commercial performances. Some analysts predicted that it would rake in around $500 million in revenue in just its opening weekend- but it’s surpassed even those figures.
Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar’s parent company, has sent out a press release that confirms that Red Dead Redemption 2 has grossed $725 million in revenue during its first three days on the market over the weekend. This not only makes it a bigger launch than Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, but also makes it the biggest opening weekend for any release across all entertainment media ever- films, games, everything.
Those are, by the way, sell-through figures, not sell-in, which means that Take-Two is considering copies that were sold by retailers to actual consumers, rather than counting copies that are shipped to retailers (which is what they usually do). Rockstar’s own Grand Theft Auto 5 technically had a bigger opening weekend, with a revenue of over $1 billion- the difference here is that GTA 5 launched on a Tuesday, while Red Dead Redemption 2 launched on a Friday.
If one were to divide $725 million by the retail price of $60 for the game’s standard edition copies, that’d give us a figure of just over 12 million copies sold. It should be kept in mind, though, that that’s not an entirely accurate figure, since that doesn’t take into account Red Dead Redemption 2’s Deluxe and Ultimate Editions, both of which are costlier. There’s also the game’s PS4 Pro bundle to consider. At the very least, though, it gives us a rough estimate of the kind of sales the game’s had in terms of units sold- most likely in the double digits, or somewhere very close to it.
Take-Two also mentioned a few other landmark achievements for the game’s commercial performance in their press release, pertaining to its sales on the PlayStation Network. Red Dead Redemption 2 has hit the highest amount of sales for a full game ever on PSN (which naturally includes the biggest three-day opening as well), and has also become the most pre-ordered full game on PSN.
In related news, Red Dead Redemption 2 also topped the weekly UK sales charts with just one day on the market, while its sales have also resulted in a boost to Take-Two’s stocks. Recently, industry analyst Michael Pachter also told us that he estimates the game’s sales to be around 15-17 million by the end of the year, but looking at its opening weekend figures, it’s entirely possible that it crosses those estimates as well.
Considering the fact that Red Dead Online is launching next month, in addition to the increasingly strong evidence for a forthcoming PC release for the game as well, it seems likely that Rockstar’s open world epic will sustain strong sales for some time to come. As it should, really- it’s a hell of a game. Read our review through here.
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