GTA V Achieves Legendary Sales Milestone, Surpasses Wii Sports

An earnings report that was recently released by Take-Two for their most recent quarter revealed that Grand Theft Auto V has now crossed a major milestone by selling at least 85 million copies since it's September 2013 release.

During the previous quarter when Take-Two released their report, the company had shipped around 80 million copies of the game that's been going strong since it was released. Selling 5 million copies in just a couple of months after the game's already been out for several years is no small feat in itself, but Take-Two has an even larger accomplishment to brag about with the game now having overtaken Wii Sports previous record of 82.83 million units sold worldwide.

With Grand Theft Auto V busting through that accomplishment with a few million units to spare, it now makes the game the "all-time best-selling video game" in the US, according to Take-Two. Reaching such a monumental milestone sets Grand Theft Auto V apart from not just other games, but also from the other installments in the series with the game being a culmination of both story-based and online experiences.

The incredible sales numbers are due in no small part to GTA Online, the feature that draws most players in every day to take part in missions, races, crimes, basically anything that the sprawling city environment has to offer. Though the story mode of the game hasn't received expansions like previous GTA games have, the online portion has been supplemented with update after update to regularly introduce new content.

But for those who have been keeping up with weekly sales charts that keep track of new games and their standings every week, the fact that GTA V has accomplished so much might be less surprising. Every week, the game manages to stay in the top-10 charts among new releases and other big-name titles like Destiny 2 and FIFA 18. It doesn't ever climb up to the No. 1 spot anymore, but you'll almost always find it in the higher rankings.

Take-Two also revealed that they made a killing from microtransactions in their games, purchases that actually raked in even more than their new games, a figure that shows just how significant these transactions are for companies and how willing gamers are to shell out money for extra content.

The full earnings report from Take-Two can be read here.