Sales figures for the original GTA trilogy of games in Japan have been unearthed from Capcom’s archive. In the early 2000s, Rockstar Gamers passed off publishing of their iconic titles to Capcom. Sales data has been available for some time but it has not been reported in an extended fashion until Game File investigated the company’s sales history deeply.
As we know, the GTA series has sold over 455 million copies worldwide. Almost half of that comes from GTA V alone. Now we have some of the smaller numbers that help add to the overall total.
Sales Data
According to Capcom’s documents spotted by Game File, GTA III sold 290,000 copies in Japan. This was during 2003, the year in which Capcom published it in that market. That’s two years after the initial release. Similarly, GTA Vice City came out in Japan 2 years after the rest of the world. It had earned 390,000 copies sold from May 2004 through March 2005. As Game File notes, nearly 1 million copies of Vice City were sold on the west’s release day.
Typically, GTA San Andreas is the best selling of the bunch across various platforms and regions. The same applied here in Japan. The game came out in early 2007 so quite some time after the October 2004 release elsewhere. However, it still managed to sell over 430,000 units by the end of March so a couple of months.
Why They Released Late
As you read, GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas all released in Japan months or even years after their original launch in the west. This is due to the fact that localisation of games back then, especially larger titles for the time took extended amounts of time and money.
“We are extremely excited to have the opportunity to bring Grand Theft Auto 3 to the Japanese gaming public. We at Rockstar Games have great respect for Japan’s passionate gaming community and admire its celebrated video game history. We have always felt that the freedom, non-linearity and gameplay mechanics explored in the Grand Theft Auto series possessed a universal allure that would appeal to gamers worldwide and clearly, Capcom shares the same beliefs. We look forward to working with them to extend the global reach of our best-selling franchise.” – Sam Houser, President of Rockstar Games, June 18 2003 via Capcom
On top of that, different regions had and even still have various censorship laws. GTA Online even had to be changed a few years ago to adhere to Japan’s rules. Meanwhile the casino features are disabled in many countries. Nowadays, several countries get fully translated versions on day one with a mostly global release on the same day. There are some exceptions. GTA V only released in Saudi Arabia this year.
In other GTA sales news, it has been revealed GTA V is the best selling PlayStation game of all time and the GTA Trilogy also achieved high spots on the charts. In even more chart news, we have full year-to-date sales charts for several markets combined; not just the US. We reported GTA V and Red Dead 2’s positions here. Plus, we have found out updated figures for the GTA Trilogy on Netflix which has been a roaring success.
To keep up to date with every GTA and Red Dead news update, make sure to check back to RockstarINTEL and sign up to our newsletter for a weekly round-up of all things Rockstar Games.
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