Rockstar may never have a bigger hit than GTA V, analyst says

Selling over 90 million copies of the same game is more-or-less unheard of in the games industry, but that's exactly what Rockstar has achieved with the mammoth GTA V, which still occasionally tops the charts despite being released all the way back in 2013. Well, Cowen & Company analyst Doug Creutz has commented in a MarketWatch piece that he thinks this will never happen again.

Creutz compares the game to Michael Jackson's smash album Thriller, which sold over 66 million copies, and what's more is that Rockstar's open world game has also surpassed just about everything produced by Hollywood the past 20 years in terms of earnings. "That's not to say Rockstar won't have other big hits, it may, but another GTA V isn't likely. Michael Jackson had a lot of hit albums but he only had one 'Thriller," Creutz said.

Marketwatch writes that GTA V has earned publisher Take-Two around $6 billion USD (with more information in their infographic below), which easily crushes the records set by films like Avatar and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Creutz moves on to compare GTA V to Mario as well:

"I think it's a wild outlier. I think maybe with the exception something Nintendo has made—Mario Brothers—but aside from that there's never been a console game that's sold so many units."

Do you think Red Dead Redemption II will come close to this success?