Xbox responds to the GTA VI pre-order report: "We're breaking records"

The GTA VI pre-order ball is still in the console makers’ court. A day after The Verge reported that pre-orders are heavily skewed toward PS5, Xbox has responded through the official channel of choice: its executives on social media.

Matthew Ball, Xbox’s chief strategy officer, replied directly to journalist Tom Warren on X last night: “We are very happy with GTA VI pre-orders. The title is breaking records for Xbox, we expect even more records will be broken throughout the fall, and our internal analysis shows our share of pre-orders matching our share of the console market.”

The answer does not dispute the underlying picture: if the pre-order share matches the market share, PS5 is still moving roughly three copies for every Xbox copy, given the install-base gap (about 100 million PS5s versus some 35 million Series X|S). What Ball rejects is the idea of an unusual bleed toward Sony’s console despite the “Plays Best on PS5” marketing push.

Only Rockstar, Sony and Microsoft know the real numbers, and none of them seems willing to publish them. Meanwhile, the pre-order wave rolls on: between the standard edition ($79.99), the Ultimate Edition ($99.99) and the $399.99 Vice City Collection, GTA VI is already the year’s commercial phenomenon two months before November 19.