As Red Dead Redemption 2 continues to smash Steam records three years after release, Take-Two admits expectations have been exceeded
The cowboy game continues to sell like hotcakes
Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two Interactive has admitted Red Dead Redemption 2 continues to sell better than the publisher thought it would.
As part of its Q3 2023 quarterly earnings presentation, Take-Two Interactive has revealed that the cowboy game has now sold 50 million copies in total, bringing the entire series to 70 million in sales. A more recent win has been Steam, with Red Dead Redemption 2 reportedly ranking as the top-selling game for the quarter and third for 2022.
"We were [...] pleased with the performance of Red Dead Redemption 2, which outpaced our expectations, driven by successful holiday promotions and events," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says.
As we previously reported, Red Dead Redemption 2 has seen consistent new concurrent player peaks on Steam in the latter half of 2022. A big ol' sale was the reason for that initially, but then it just kept on happening.
A large part of its sustainability is the strong community that has formed around the game – heck, remember that one Red Dead Redemption 2 fan with nearly 6,000 hours on Stadia? While that bodes well for the game's health, it's also a community that feels somewhat starved of content. Just this time last year, Red Dead Online players launched a revival campaign hoping to catch Rockstar's eye, with one player going as far as to lay out a five-year plan.
The fact Red Dead Redemption 2 is doing better than Take-Two would expect makes for pleasant reading, though it may offer little comfort to long-term fans unless it's actioned upon with a more vibrant update cadence with more meaningful content.
Here are some great games like Red Dead Redemption 2 to storm the old west with.
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Iain joins the GamesRadar team as Deputy News Editor following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When not helping Ali run the news team, he can be found digging into communities for stories – the sillier the better. When he isn’t pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new hat, you’ll find him amassing an army of Pokemon plushies.