90% of GTA 6 pre-orders chose the $100 Ultimate Edition over cheaper version

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A short while back, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick confirmed that the Ultimate Edition of GTA 6 has sold more copies (despite the $100 price tag and all) than the cheaper version… and boy, has it.

Now, we know exactly how much, thanks to new reports from digital intelligence firm Sensor Tower (as per GamesIndustry.biz ).

Apparently, a whopping 89% of pre-orders so far have been for the Ultimate Edition rather than the Standard Edition, which costs $80 – $20 less. The percentages are comparable across PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, too: 88.5% on the former and 90% on the latter.

Those… are quite big figures, all things considered – even when you take into account what Zelnick said, that it "might be a reflection of the fact that the most avid consumers are the ones who are pre-ordering."

Karl Kontus, senior vice president and general manager of video game insights at Sensor Tower, finds it surprising, too, even though special editions "always tend to perform well during the preorder period."

According to Kontus, he's "never seen a 90% premium share before." He has seen 50% – but "typical premium shares for games tend to be at around 10–20%." While he sees the figure dropping over time for GTA 6, "it's likely it'll stay significantly above the industry standard" still.

Rockstar's long-awaited game is "very hard to forecast," though, "given it lives in a league of its own." That, it very much so does. "There is no benchmark for how this game will perform from here," as Kontus concludes.

But why is the Ultimate Edition doing so well now? There is, of course, the very reason that Zelnick gave – but Kontus also proposes another very simple one: the fact that the difference between $100 and $80 isn't all that much, considering all of the digital goodies you get if you opt for the pricier version of GTA 6… and, yeah, I suppose that makes sense.

I'm curious to see how GTA 6 does come its November 19 release, personally – and also to find out whether the split between the Ultimate Edition and Standard Edition's popularity stays the same or balances out by quite a bit.

GTA 6 fans don't "go around buying nerdy niche" games, indie says, so fellow devs don't really need to get out of Rockstar's way