Sensor Tower Says Almost 90% of GTA 6 Pre-Orders Are for the Ultimate Edition

Sensor Tower has revealed that almost 90% of GTA 6 pre-orders are currently for the more expensive Ultimate Edition, a split the analytics firm says is unlike anything it has seen before.

Digital intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimates that 89% of GTA 6 pre-orders are for the $100 Ultimate Edition, compared with just 11% for the $80 Standard Edition.

The figures are remarkably similar across both launch platforms. According to Sensor Tower, the Ultimate Edition accounts for around 90% of Xbox pre-orders and 88.5% of PlayStation pre-orders.

The data provides some additional context to recent comments from Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, who revealed that GTA 6 pre-orders were "skewing more to the premium edition."

However, the extent of that split has surprised even Sensor Tower.

Karl Kontus, SVP and GM of Video Game Insights at Sensor Tower, told GamesIndustry.biz that premium editions generally perform particularly well during the pre-order period, when purchases are more heavily weighted towards dedicated fans.

Even with that in mind, GTA 6 appears to be an extreme outlier as Kontus explains.

"I have never seen a 90% premium share before"

"A 50% premium share during preorders is a great number. Typical premium shares for games tend to be at around 10–20%."

Ultimate Edition Share Expected to Decline

Sensor Tower expects the percentage of Ultimate Edition purchases to fall as GTA 6 approaches release and a broader audience begins buying the game.

Kontus believes the split could move closer to 50/50 among the much larger wave of pre-orders expected immediately before launch, although he stressed that GTA 6 is particularly difficult to forecast.

"The vast majority of the marketing campaign hasn't kicked off yet, and most of the preorders will come in the last week or so pre-launch."

"I expect the split for these to be much closer to 50/50. That being said, GTA6 is very hard to forecast, given it lives in a league of its own. There is no benchmark for how this game will perform from here."

Even after more casual players enter the market, Sensor Tower expects the Ultimate Edition's overall share to remain significantly above the usual industry average.

Why Are So Many Players Buying the Ultimate Edition?

Kontus believes the relatively small difference between the two editions' prices could be one of the main reasons for the unusually high Ultimate Edition share.

GTA 6's Standard Edition costs $80, while the Ultimate Edition costs $100 and includes a range of additional in-game content.

"The difference between $80 (already higher than the industry standard $70 we see today) and $100 isn't that big, and the $100 SKU comes with a lot of additional content"

Kontus added that premium editions can sometimes contain relatively minor extras intended to justify a higher price, whereas he believes GTA 6 offers more substantial incentives, including additional vehicles, weapons and access to a custom modification shop.

"For a lot of people, this is the one 'must buy' game this year, and they will want to make the most of it"

Sensor Tower Estimates 4.3 Million GTA 6 Pre-Orders So Far

Sensor Tower's GTA 6 sales tracker currently estimates that the game has accumulated approximately 4.3 million pre-orders.

Of those pre-orders, 77% are estimated to have been made on PlayStation, with the remaining 23% on Xbox.

Predicting where that number will eventually end up is considerably more difficult.

Kontus said that applying a typical pre-order trajectory to GTA 6's current numbers could theoretically result in more than 40 million pre-orders by launch. However, both Sensor Tower and Take-Two have cautioned that the extraordinary level of interest surrounding GTA 6 makes conventional comparisons unreliable.

Zelnick recently described GTA 6's pre-order numbers as "unprecedented and astonishing," while acknowledging that they are so unusual that Take-Two does not yet know exactly how they will translate into final sales.

Sensor Tower suspects GTA 6's pre-orders may be relatively frontloaded and therefore believes a figure closer to 25 million by launch could be more realistic than 40 million.

Even that would represent an extraordinary result.

Kontus compared the estimate with Cyberpunk 2077, which had eight million pre-orders by launch, and suggested that 25 million GTA 6 pre-orders could represent approximately $2 billion in sales before the game is even released.

For now, Sensor Tower's data indicates that GTA 6's earliest buyers aren't simply pre-ordering in huge numbers – an overwhelming majority are also choosing Rockstar's most expensive edition.