Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy has ended up selling millions of copies since its release. That is despite its shortcomings and a long list of quality concerns, most of which remain to be addressed as far as players are concerned.
Speaking during an earnings call for the third quarter of the 2022 financial year, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick stated that sales for the remastered trilogy exceeded all expectations. While no exact figures were revealed, GTA: The Trilogy has been estimated (via VGC) to have sold somewhere in the range of 10 million copies in its first three months of release.
That estimation is based on an updated sales figure of Grand Theft Auto 5 surpassing 160 million copies and the franchise itself selling through over 370 million copies. Taking out the sales figure given by Take-Two Interactive from the previous quarter, a difference of 10 million copies arrive, which can largely be attributed to GTA: The Trilogy.
Zelnick admitted that the trilogy was marred by issues at release and made a note of ensuring quality for future releases—Grand Theft Auto 6.
“Very occasionally we fall short, and I think the trilogy was an example of that,” said Zelnick. “Going forward, we remain highly focused on quality, and we are exceedingly confident in all of our upcoming releases.”
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy had to face a plethora of problems after release. The issues ranged from disastrous character models to their goofy expressions and inhuman body proportions. The trilogy also had to deal with frame-rate issues across all platforms and the games were prone to tearing textures and freezing randomly. There were also the game-breaking bugs, making it nearly impossible to sometimes complete missions, explore, or even launch the game in question.
Zelnick has previously downplayed all such issues by stating that developer Rockstar Games only faced one glitch while working on GTA: The Trilogy and which was resolved soon after.
That was quite the glitch because GTA: The Trilogy had to be removed on PC. Rockstar Games had to even offer free games to owners of the trilogy as a way to make amends.
