Red Dead Redemption 2 Will Be Big, But Not Grand Theft Auto Big Admits Publisher Take-Two

Grand Theft Auto V has been a monstrous success for Rockstar Games and their parent company Take-Two Interactive, selling over 80 million units with no signs of slowing down. Unsurprisingly, Rockstar's next open world project, Red Dead Redemption 2 is being hotly anticipated as the next big thing, but are some people setting their expectations a bit too high?

Take-Two Interactive CEO Straus Zelnick recently sat down for an interview with GameIndustry.biz, and he actually tried to play down the Red Dead hype just a tad…

"I don't [want to make assumptions]. 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 Grand Theft Auto 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 V. 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 Redemption 2? We do. But we are not putting it in the context of GTA V."

I'd agree it's rather unlikely Red Dead Redemption 2 is going to do GTA V numbers. The first Red Dead Redemption sold a little under 15 million units, which is still great, but it sure isn't 80 million. Then again, Grand Theft Auto IV only sold around 25 million units, so who knows – Red Dead Redemption 2 could explode in a similar way. It may not surpass GTA V, but RDR 2 could conceivably end up selling 50 or 60 million. Let's not forget, RDR 2 is Rockstar's first true current-gen effort, GTA V began life on the Xbox 360 and PS3, so who knows what kind of groundbreaking, sales generating stuff they've come up with?

Red Dead Redemption 2 moseys onto Xbox One and PS4 in spring or early summer of 2018. You can check out WWG's latest coverage of the game, right here.

[via GameIndustry.biz]