There's no falsehood in saying that Grand Theft Auto 5 is going to be a hugely popular game. The question is, how popular? An analyst for Sterne Agee, Arvind Bhatia, thinks that it'll be popular enough that the game will manage to sell 18 million copies in its first six months.
Bhatia's figures came from a "hypothetical probability model," and also led Bhatia to the conclusion that "around 250 staffers have been working on the game for five years."
Given that we've seen games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 sell 7.5 million copies, just in the first month of the game's release alone. As Grand Theft Auto is just as big of a name as Call of Duty (or bigger arguably), 18 million certainly isn't an impossible figure for the game to reach, even in the six month time frame, though total sales will be hurt by the lack of a PC release.
Featuring three playable characters, a first for the series, Grand Theft Auto V takes place in a re-imagined, present-day Southern California in the largest and most thriving game-world we have ever created set in the sprawling city of Los Santos and for miles beyond - from the tops of the mountains to the depths of the ocean.
Not much is known about the story, but Rockstar has confirmed there will be multiple endings, and the story will be about the same length as Red Dead Redemption, at about 25 - 30 hours. Keep in mind, that's before the massive amount of secondary things to do, so this should be a monster of a game.
Originally slated for a Spring release, Rockstar recently announced that Grand Theft Auto V will be available on Sept. 17, 2013.
