14 DAY TRIAL // Arvind Bhatia, an analyst working for Sterne Agee who is watching the video game market, expects the upcoming Grand Theft Auto V to sell more than 18 million copies during the first six months after it launches.
This would mean that the Rockstar-created title will move more games to players than this year’s installment in the Call of Duty franchise, which will be developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision.
Arvind Bhatia is also quoted by GamesIndustry.biz as saying that the overall development costs for GTA V will come in at around 137.5 million dollars (100.9 million Euro).
The estimate is created using a hypothetic model that involves around 250 employees working on the game for five years at Rockstar.
The analyst says that the minimum sales number that the developer and publisher Take Two need in order to make a profit is 15 million copies.
Rockstar officially announced the existence of GTA V, after much speculation from the fan base, late during 2012 and the company surprised competitors by announcing that the game would be launched in late spring.
Recently, the development team has announced that the release date is now set for September 17 of this year, in order to give Rockstar more time to polish the experience.
After the announcement, a number of analysts have speculated that Rockstar might be interested in making GTA V available on the next generation of home consoles from Microsoft and Sony.
The new game will take place in Los Santos, which is based on real-life Los Angeles and on Southern California.
Rockstar plans to deliver another satire of the American way of life, this time focusing on the effects of wealth and the actions people are willing to undertake to obtain it.
GTA V will include three main characters that the player will switch between as he progresses through the story.