GTA III at 25: 14.5 Million Copies Then, a 475-Million Series Now, and GTA VI Next

Grand Theft Auto III turns 25 this week, and its own numbers now look modest: just over 14.5 million copies, against the nearly 475 million units Take-Two says the whole series has sold-in. But almost all of those 475 million came after the 3D Liberty City that DMA Design shipped in October 2001, and the next entry, GTA VI, arrives on 19 November.

This feature is built on Take-Two's August 2026 investor presentation, Metacritic's game pages, Steam's public review and player-count data (read on 21 October 2026 at 07:03 UTC) and sales milestones reported at the time and compiled on Wikipedia's GTA III page. Nobody at AFK Journal is claiming to have replayed Liberty City for the occasion: the point is what the sales, the critics and the players say, and whether the usual story about GTA III survives them.

What are GTA III's numbers at 25?

The 97 still matters. Wikipedia notes it is tied with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 as the highest-rated PlayStation 2 game on Metacritic. Eurogamer's Tom Bramwell called it "a luscious, sprawling epic" in October 2001, and the praise at the time centred on the sound, the open city and the freedom, with the controls the most common complaint.

How did a delayed PS2 game become the template?

GTA III was made by a core team of 23 people at DMA Design in Edinburgh, working with Rockstar in New York, and it began life as a Dreamcast project before moving to PS2. According to the sources compiled on Wikipedia, Rockstar offered it to Microsoft as an Xbox exclusive and Microsoft declined because of the content and the weak sales of the earlier, top-down GTA games. The release was then pushed back after the 11 September attacks so the team could change references and missions.

It shipped on PS2 in October 2001, on Windows in May 2002 and on Xbox in November 2003. In the US it was the best-selling game of 2001 and had passed 2 million copies by February 2002; in the UK it was the first game to receive a "Diamond" award for more than one million sales. In 2002 only one game outsold it in the US: its own sequel, Vice City.

The sales kept coming for years. Within a year GTA III had sold 6 million copies and generated more than $250 million, and by January 2003 it was at 7 million and over $350 million. US sales reached 6.55 million units by December 2007. Japan came late and smaller: Capcom published a Japanese-language version in September 2003, which sold about 120,000 copies in its first week and more than 350,000 by January 2008, according to the figures compiled on Wikipedia.

How has every GTA sold since 2001?

Each 3D entry after GTA III sold more than the one before it until GTA IV, and then GTA V broke the chart. Take-Two's August 2026 investor presentation puts GTA V at over 230 million units sold-in and the franchise at nearly 475 million, figures Game Developer reported on 7 August. Older entries no longer get individual updates, so the table uses the last public figure for each.

Two milestones show the curve. Take-Two said the series had passed 100 million copies in March 2011, when GTA IV crossed 20 million, according to Wikipedia's GTA IV page. Fifteen years later the total is nearly 475 million, and GTA V alone accounts for about 48% of it. The four 3D games before V add up to roughly 84.5 million on their last public figures; GTA V has sold about 2.7 times that.

What do critics and Steam players say now?

Critics were nearly unanimous from GTA III to GTA V: every main entry sits between 95 and 98 on Metacritic. Steam players are less tidy, and the split is mostly about versions rather than games.

Of the original PC trilogy, GTA III has the lowest Steam rating at 86.5%, still a "Very Positive" score but five to six points behind Vice City and San Andreas. Its 2021 remaster is the weakest-rated GTA on Steam we checked: 66.0% positive, while the Trilogy's Metascore is 54. The original GTA III's Steam page no longer offers it for sale, so its reviews come from people who bought it before the store switched to the Definitive Edition.

The remaster gap is not unique to GTA III, but it is widest there. Vice City drops from 92.7% in its original PC form to 82.9% as a Definitive Edition, and San Andreas from 92.1% to 80.2%, a fall of about 10 to 12 points. GTA III falls by 20.5 points, from 86.5% to 66.0%. Players reviewing the oldest game in the trilogy have been the least forgiving of the update.

GTA V is in a different league. Its Legacy version has more than two million Steam reviews and ranked 11th in Steam's most-played chart dated 20 October, with a peak of 64,960 players, according to Steam's charts. The Enhanced version ranked 32nd with a peak of 61,442. GTA III, 25 years old and no longer sold in its original form, had 17 people playing at the moment we checked.

Was GTA III really the turning point? The case against

The usual story is that GTA III made the series. The numbers support a narrower version of it.

Against: GTA III was not the first Grand Theft Auto. The top-down GTA (1997) and GTA 2 had already set the tone, the city crime premise and the controversy. On sales, GTA III's 14.5 million is about 3% of the series total, and Vice City and San Andreas, both released within three years of it, each sold more. If the question is which game turned GTA into one of the biggest entertainment brands, the answer on Take-Two's own numbers is GTA V, not GTA III. On critics, GTA IV has the higher Metascore (98).

For: every 3D entry since uses the structure GTA III shipped with, the explorable city, the radio stations, the mission-givers spread across districts, and the sales curve only starts in 2001. Microsoft turning down an exclusive also shows how little that success was expected. Our reading: GTA III built the template and GTA V built the business. Both claims are supported; the second one is the bigger number.

What does it mean for GTA VI?

GTA VI is the first new numbered GTA in more than 13 years, the longest gap in the series by a distance: until now, no gap between main entries had been longer than the 5.4 years from GTA IV to GTA V. It launches on 19 November 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S at $79.99 for the Standard Edition, with no PC version announced; our GTA 6 everything-we-know guide has the confirmed details, and a Q1 2027 PC window is so far only reported, not confirmed.

The scale has changed since Liberty City. Take-Two's presentation says GTA VI's first trailer drew over 93 million YouTube views in 24 hours, and the second over 475 million views across platforms. Leonida's map is reported to be about twice the size of GTA V's. Everything about GTA VI is now measured against GTA V, the game that sold 230 million, not against GTA III. Our GTA VI hub collects all our coverage before launch.

What we don't know

Take-Two has not given a separate sales figure for GTA III since 2008, so the 14.5 million does not include the mobile versions released from 2011 or the 2021 Definitive Edition. Vice City, San Andreas and GTA IV are in the same position. Take-Two's figures are units "sold-in" to retailers and storefronts, not copies bought by players.

Steam only covers PC players, and the original GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas are no longer sold there, which narrows who can review them. Metascores from 2001 come from a smaller, different set of publications than today's, so a 97 then and a 97 now are not the same measurement. And no public source we found explains why the release date is listed as both 22 and 23 October.