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The story
After buzz spread that a new entry in the “Legend of Zelda” series had overtaken GTA6 in US Amazon’s pre-order rankings, a reseller who buys up stock to resell pointed out on X (formerly Twitter) that “comparing physical pre-order numbers alone doesn’t mean anything — GTA6 is a multiplatform title where digital pre-orders massively outnumber physical ones.” On 5ch’s “Hardware/Industry” (Geha) board, where this was picked up, reactions split between people conceding the point was fair, others questioning how that squares with Sony’s move to drop discs, and still others mocking the trend by citing Sensor Tower’s pre-order estimates (4.4 million in August → 5.85 million on October 5 → 5.75 million on October 13) as proof the numbers are ‘going down.’ The reliability of pre-order figures as a metric itself became the central debate.
I don’t know about anything else, but right now Zelda’s pre-order numbers are higher. But GTA6 is code-in-a-box, and digital pre-orders massively outnumber physical ones, so comparing them doesn’t mean anything. It’s multiplatform, after all.
Source: x.com / Original post here
What people said
Maybe it's a store that lets you pre-order even digital-only copies?
You're conveniently ignoring the fact that with Nintendo, physical and digital prices barely differ.
so the digital ratio on Nintendo titles has gone up too.
If we're talking about the situation in Japan, isn't that exact ratio basically the whole point when it comes to distribution and retail?
Sony: 'Guess nobody's even lining up outside stores anymore, huh?'
It's less that Zelda's strong and more that GTA's weak here.
after all, GTA5 padded its numbers with fire-sale PC discounts and endless sales.
Or is that just wishful thinking?
But GTA6's bar is its predecessor's 11.2 million day-one — so the fact that it's even being put in the same conversation as a remake of Ocarina of Time, a game whose original hasn't sold even 10 million copies, is already an embarrassment for GTA6.
Don't you dare complain about double standards again.
and if it becomes clear that nobody even buys a GTA-tier title in stores,
then this is about as important a benchmark as you're going to get going forward.
How is that 'meaningless'?
Yeah, if even a GTA-tier title looks like this, every other title is a non-starter.
This is seriously bad.
What are PS fanboys going to do about this?
It's not some inside fact — most people would just notice it naturally.
So 'noticing' means they don't actually have any inside info?
It's a game that's guaranteed to sell even without inside info, so you can make a decent guess without it.
This article's about the US, lol.
is that really a gap digital sales can flip?
It'll be the usual move — quietly counting PC sales as PS numbers, for sure.
And the PC version is still a year out anyway, so this is purely PS5's real numbers showing.
I doubt it'll sell well enough to keep trash-talking until the PC version drops, but it's definitely going to eat into sales of the Xbox version too — the one they look down on so much.
With physical there's at least a chance it sells out, but with digital…
If you pre-order it, the payment just gets charged eventually and it downloads — it's a step you go through either way, just a question of sooner or later.
August (4.4 million)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HQE7mVzXoAAm_1G.jpg
↓
September (5.28 million)
https://www.gamespark.jp/article/2026/09/09/171957.html
↓
October 5 (5.85 million)
https://sensortower.com/grand-theft-auto-VI/sales-tracker
↓↓↓
October 13 (5.75 million)
> from the sales tracker
It went down, lol.
The next bump will probably be next month — pre-order numbers basically only climb at set intervals.
Lol, what is even going on here.
Did people who were disappointed it's locked to 30fps go and cancel their pre-orders?
Background and Key Points of the Debate
Pre-order rankings on sites like US Amazon are commonly used as a rough gauge of pre-release sales momentum, but what’s publicly visible is essentially the pre-order count for physical copies handled by retailers — digital pre-orders and pre-purchases are often not included. Because Nintendo titles tend to have little price difference between the retail and digital versions, physical pre-orders stay strong; big multiplatform titles, by contrast, have shifted heavily toward digital, so comparing physical pre-orders alone makes them look weaker than they actually are. The Sensor Tower estimates posted in the thread (4.4 million in August → 5.28 million in September → 5.85 million on October 5 → 5.75 million on October 13) also show that tracker numbers can dip day-to-day, underscoring that pre-order data is never more than a provisional figure that can swing up or down. The thread split over two separate issues: whether the point that ‘you can’t make a fair comparison without counting digital’ is itself valid, and distrust toward the position of the reseller (a buyer who stocks up to resell) who raised it. Worth noting is that the latter tends to drift into suspicion of the speaker’s motives rather than actually examining whether the claim holds up.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry, “Geha”) thread “Reseller: ‘Even if physical Zelda pre-orders outnumber GTA’s, the comparison is meaningless — GTA has more digital pre-orders’.”
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