Despite its sixth birthday inching ever closer, Grand Theft Auto V was the best-selling game for the first half of 2019 in the UK.
Some games have longer lifespans than others, and how long a game's lifespan is going to be is almost impossible to predict. For sports games such as FIFA and Madden, we know they'll last about a year due to the fact a new installment in the franchise will come along to replace it. As for other titles, their longevity can be a lot harder to determine.
Grand Theft Auto V was first released in September 2013. While we expected people to be playing it until GTA VI comes along to replace it, we can't imagine even Rockstar pictured the game going on to be as successful as it has become. GTA V is now the third best selling game of all time, having moved more than 110 million copies.
Even more impressive is how much that number still continues to grow. The Entertainment Retailer's Association recently revealed the top ten best-selling games in the UK for the first half of 2019. It would have been shocking enough if GTA V had slipped in at number ten, but it performed far better than that. The Rockstar Games behemoth was the number one best-selling game between January and June of this year in the UK.
GTA V sold 361,312 copies across 12 months. That means it narrowly beat FIFA 19 which sold 360,558 copies. As for its other rivals, no one even came close. The Divison 2 occupied third place and sold almost 100,000 fewer copies than GTA V. More good news for Rockstar was that Red Dead Redemption 2 placed fourth with almost 260,000 copies of its own sold.
The only question that remains now is when will GTA V's dominance end? The opening of Los Santos's Diamond Casino and Resort generated more online traffic than the game has seen at any other point during its six-year tenure on the scene. That plus its dominance in the sales department seems to indicate that there is no real end in sight. At this point, the only thing that will halt the success of GTA V is the release of GTA VI.