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The story
A post claiming “GTA was basically unknown before GTA5” kicked off a debate on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board about how well-known the GTA series really was in Japan. Several replies pushed back with sales data showing GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas each sold over 15 million copies during the PS2 era, arguing the series was far from obscure. Others countered that GTA never cracked the top 50 in Japan’s domestic sales charts, leaving the question of its actual name recognition unresolved. Some pointed out that GTA5 only looks so disproportionately huge because it went years without a sequel, letting its sales figures keep piling up unchallenged.
What people said
Nobody knew about it.
Wasn't there news about the media picking up on its extreme content, even getting brought up in the Diet (Japan's parliament)?
Or maybe I'm misremembering.
Yeah, some Japanese municipalities even have ordinances banning GTA.
GTA3: 15 million
GTA Vice City: 20 million
GTA San Andreas: 28 million
GTA4: 25 million
It was the best-selling PS2 game, after all.
GTA2, though, was apparently too tasteless to even get a Japanese release.
Nothing before it let you do that much freely.
That's something only us old guys who lived through it can really appreciate.
First time I saw GTA3 was on a friend's PC version.
Ran pretty smoothly on a Pentium 4 + GeForce 3 or whatever he had.
Sure, nobody in Japan cared, but in the West it was a massive, off-the-charts hit.
At the time I remember thinking, "finally, a PS2 sandbox game on par with Mario 64."
There's even an interview where the GTA devs of that era say they respected Mario 64.
Plenty of people in Japan were playing it too.
Stop spreading misinformation.
Not just GTA — Fallout, The Witcher, COD, and lately that "whatever-33" game too. Way too many Western games get suddenly hyped up out of nowhere.
And since people always recommend starting from part 2 or 3, it's genuinely hard to get into, and even when you do play it, you're completely lost.
The bugs are awful too. Keep this up and it's not just Western games sinking — PlayStation's going down with them.
Exactly this. Sales window's way too long, plus all the "Sutogura" streamers (ストグラ, a popular Japanese GTA roleplay-server streaming scene) keeping it relevant.
Exactly, the build quality is just bad.
They get hyped to death and still turn out badly made, so honestly I have zero goodwill toward PS because of it.
Back in the PS3 era there was a Western-game boom and I played a few of the buzzy titles — the craftsmanship was genuinely shoddy, riddled with bugs, and I felt cheated more times than I can count.
And if you complain, you get "bugs just come with Western games and open worlds," so of course people bail.
Probably why Japan ends up all-Nintendo — too many casuals who only play Japanese games.
Jumping in here out of curiosity — you said you played some on PS3.
Mind listing every title you played?
Oh, really?
I had no idea and honestly zero interest, so I just assumed it was some sequel.
For the record, I only brought it up as an example of "a game that was in Early Access for a while and then suddenly gets hyped the moment it's ported to PS — which feels off."
Wasn't it in Early Access for like two or three years? Then the second a PS port was announced, everyone suddenly started hyping it, which struck me as strange.
You mean Baldur's Gate 3?
I don't remember everything from that far back, but I think I played the ones that got some buzz at the time — Fallout 3, Kingdoms of Amalur, GTA5, and The Last of Us.
Fallout 3 in particular I remember being seriously bad; The Last of Us, on the other hand, was a genuine masterpiece — though part 2 ruined all of that.
Just checked my game shelf and realized I've gotten rid of most of them. Bit of a waste, honestly.
Yeah, probably that one. So it's not "33" then.
But "Baldur's Gate 3" being the first one you played is a weird way to number it.
Wonder if there's some meaning behind it.
Jumping in, but Baldur's Gate 3 really is the third installment — parts 1 and 2 came out over 20 years ago.
It's a completely different thing from whatever "33" game you're thinking of.
No no, I genuinely want to know — what title did you think Re: #53 was talking about?
What game titled "-33" has a "part one"?
Just use that plank you're holding 🙄 (a snarky pun on 板 — meaning both "wooden plank" and the 5ch "board" you're posting on — i.e. "just look it up yourself")
It froze constantly and I kept getting stuck on objects — I was playing it on edge the whole time.
I bought it right around launch, before any real patches had come out, so it was just freeze after freeze, getting stuck in geometry, over and over.
I hear it eventually got fixed after a while, but ever since then I stopped buying Western games on release day.
1st: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (approx. 17.33 million)
2nd: Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec (approx. 14.89 million)
3rd: Gran Turismo 4 (approx. 11.76 million)
4th: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (approx. 9.8 million)
5th: Final Fantasy X (approx. 8.5 million)
Did this console really sell 160 million units…?
Famitsu Wave DVD even ran a pretty long promo video, and I remember thinking, "why is a game with such dated graphics getting this much coverage?"
I'd guess that's around when it actually became known in Japan.
GTA3 became known through its explosive overseas success.
A 1–2 year delay for localization was totally normal back then, so nothing strange about it.
San Andreas was the one whose release got seriously delayed, tied to a major overhaul of CERO's (Japan's game ratings body) rules.
It got hit with some absurd restrictions — like not letting you spend money properly — and was so unpopular that importing the overseas version and fan-translating it into Japanese became a whole trend.
Sony rejected it outright, which meant GTA3 couldn't be released on the Japanese PS2.
Capcom ended up taking the lead in setting up CERO so that GTA3 could actually be released.
Background and Talking Points
The GTA series has historically been a heavyweight overseas, selling in the tens of millions with every release — figures cited in the thread put GTA3 at 15 million, Vice City at 20 million, San Andreas at 28 million, and GTA4 at 25 million. On the other hand, GTA never cracked the top of Japan’s domestic PS2 sales charts, which were dominated by Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy — highlighting a gap between its “global blockbuster” status and its actual name recognition within Japan. As the thread notes, GTA3’s Japanese release was delayed because Sony balked at its violent content, and the game only made it out after the establishment of CERO (the Computer Entertainment Rating Organization). GTA5 looks disproportionately famous less because of raw sales growth and more because no sequel followed for years, letting its sales window — bolstered by ongoing online content — keep stretching out. Worth noting: the thread’s own fact-check pushed back on the premise that “1 through 4 were completely unknown” in the first place.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [Geha]) thread “GTA was completely unknown before 5 (parts 1–4) — so why did it suddenly blow up with 5?“
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