RDR2 Is Now the 3rd Best-Selling Game Ever (85 Million)

Nearly eight years after launch, Red Dead Redemption 2 has just hit a historic milestone. On Take-Two’s May 21, 2026 earnings call, the publisher confirmed that Rockstar’s Western has sold more than 85 million units. That’s enough to pass Wii Sports and claim the third spot on the all-time best-sellers podium.

Red Dead Redemption 2 enters the top 3 best-selling games

The number came straight from Strauss Zelnick himself: RDR2 not only cleared 85 million, it posted its best sales year since its October 2018 launch. For a single-player game with no online mode propped up by constant updates, one that still sells several million copies a year eight years after release, that’s a statistical anomaly in this industry.

This milestone moves it past Wii Sports and its 82.9 million, a total that stayed untouchable for years thanks to the bundle that shipped with the Wii. Here’s what the top of the chart looks like now.

Tetris is often listed separately: across all ports it tops 500 million, but the industry counts it on its own given how fragmented it is across decades of versions.

Rockstar holds two of gaming’s three biggest hits

The other big takeaway is Rockstar’s sheer dominance of this chart. With GTA 5 close to 230 million units, also confirmed on May 21, and RDR2 now in third, the studio owns two of the three best-selling games ever. Only Minecraft, with its 300-million-plus, is still out of Rockstar North’s reach.

GTA 5, for its part, keeps breaking its own record, still selling several million copies a quarter after spanning three console generations. To understand that extraordinary longevity, we broke down why GTA 5 still holds up after 2013. Two models coexist: the endless GTA Online cash machine on one side, the single-player blockbuster that never dies on the other.

Why a single-player game from 2018 still sells this well

The real question is how a game with no sequel, no seasons, and no battle pass keeps crushing it. The answer comes down to a few things. First, raw quality: RDR2 is still a technical showcase, built on the RAGE engine and Euphoria physics (the same technical lineage as GTA 4, GTA 5, and the upcoming GTA 6), with a level of simulation, animation, and writing rarely matched since. Then there’s word of mouth and recurring sales, which constantly bring new players to a title that’s regularly discounted. Finally, the catalog effect: with GTA 6 on the horizon, plenty of curious players are discovering or rediscovering Rockstar’s craft through its Western.

The contrast with its own online mode is striking. Red Dead Online never took off the way GTA Online did, and Rockstar wound down its development back in 2022. Yet it’s the single-player game, sold once at full price, that’s carrying sales today. It’s proof that narrative premium still holds enormous value, even in the live-service era.

What it means for GTA 6

For Rockstar, this record lands at the perfect time. Take-Two is targeting $8.0 to $8.2 billion in revenue for its fiscal 2027, guidance carried squarely by GTA 6, expected on November 19, 2026. The lesson from RDR2 is crystal clear: a Rockstar title doesn’t have a sales window of a few months, it has an income stream that plays out over years, even decades in GTA 5’s case.

On the technical side, GTA 6 inherits the exact toolkit that made RDR2 a benchmark, RAGE and Euphoria chief among them, pushed up a notch. When a 2018 Western still sells by the millions, you start to grasp the staggering commercial floor the next GTA is landing on. To see how the two games stack up, our technical comparison of GTA 6 vs RDR2 breaks down what Rockstar’s engine gained between them, and we’re keeping an eye on the GTA 6 release date.