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With GTA6’s release about a month away, a post appeared on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry board — nicknamed “Geha” [ゲハ, short for ゲーム・ハード, a board known for heated console-war-style debates] — claiming that IGN, GameSpot, and Eurogamer were all about to award it a perfect Metascore of 100. The thread took off from there. The previous game, GTA5, holds the record for the fastest-selling entertainment product of all time across any medium, and posters voiced both hope and anxiety that “depending on how GTA6 turns out, the entire Western games industry could slide into a slump.” At the same time, plenty of posters took a more cautious view on sales, arguing that “it’ll be hard to beat the 200 million units the last game sold” and asking “how much will the now-older original fanbase really still play it?” — so opinion was split on both the review scores and the sales numbers.
What people said
GameSpot 100
Eurogamer 100
It used to be listed on Metacritic, way back.
If GTA6 somehow flops, it'll hit software sales for the next decade, trust in AAA games, and PS/Xbox adoption — the whole Western games industry could end up in a slump.
With the entire industry's profits riding on it, it wouldn't be strange if reviewers go a little easy on it.
Honestly, if a game with this much money and hype behind it scores under 95, that's genuinely game over.
Even Elden Ring only got 96.
It needs at least 97.
No question it's the most anticipated piece of content in all of entertainment right now.
That's true in both a good way and a bad way.
GTA5 has stayed on the Western sales charts the whole time, physical and digital alike.
It's basically propping up the industry on its own.
Whether GTA6 succeeds or fails is going to have a huge impact.
It'll affect the very idea of 'AAA titles' as a category
if GTA6 flops.
Honestly I think it's pretty much true though.
GTA5 is in the Guinness World Records as the fastest entertainment product ever — movies included — to pass $1 billion in sales, in just 3 days.
They probably believe 'GTA6 will carry us through.'
On top of that, it'll need a 60fps version on PS6 and 'Helix' [the rumored codename for next-gen Xbox] to help drive those platforms too.
You'd think PS5 would pick up the slack from Xbox's collapse, but it's actually down a bit from PS4 too.
This is actually the first time ever that both PlayStation and Xbox are down from their previous generation.
Those two platforms' unit counts feed directly into the AAA market's install base.
GTA6 is expected to grow that base.
It's been saddled with a job way bigger than just being 'one game.'
GTA6 selling well is a given, but
I doubt it has the pull to make people who still haven't bought a console go drop $600 on one.
Let's just take that with a grain of salt.
Did Take-Two actually say that?
First I'm hearing of it.
It's been 13 years since the last one and a lot of that old crowd has quit gaming.
I can't picture the people who played it back then still playing this kind of game now that they're older.
Isn't it the opposite — wouldn't they play it BECAUSE they're older now?
RDR2 (also pretty old now, at 8 years) hit 80 million, so if GTA6 is good I'd expect it to clear 100 million easily. 200 million, though, who knows.
All the traveling around is a hassle and it feels like a chore — do you really want that once you're older?
You're not exactly swimming in free time at that age.
Are you really at the 'time-efficiency' [タイパ, slang shorthand for 'time performance'] stage of life? You're not a little kid anymore.
If you're that age you'd normally have a family by now.
Only single people get to not care about time-efficiency.
You're talking about 'normal' on Geha of all places?
The thought of people here having families and still hanging out on Geha is kind of depressing.
100 million is a pipe dream — honestly the hardware itself can't even keep up lol.
Consoles [CS, i.e. 'console'] obviously, but even PC isn't a safe bet anymore.
A single trailer pulling 300 million views is a different dimension of attention though.
You can't lump it in with other games, so who really knows what happens.
RDR2 sold 85 million without even a next-gen version, so there's no way GTA6 — with attention on a whole different scale — doesn't at least match that. lol
200 million people bought the last one — are they all single? I'd bet most of them are busy people.
If you're that busy, should you even be playing games in the first place?
The console physical edition alone sold around 1.5 million copies, so it's not niche.
In Japan it's the kind of title a lot of people know the name and gist of but don't actually like.
Kind of like how 'Wolverine' more often means the Marvel character than Sony's own Wolverine game [a reference to Insomniac's upcoming PlayStation title].
You'd normally expect everything to be selling briskly across the board — is it getting caught in the backlash against dropping the disc?
I checked Amazon and the physical edition was out of stock.
It's got that GTA brand power behind it too.
That Monster Hunter number was for the first month, not the first week.
That's the eerie part.
With a code-in-a-box edition you're not limited by disc supply, so having zero restock in sight a month before launch is strange.
In other words, it's not a shipping problem.
Maybe Amazon is deliberately holding back pre-orders because they don't want leftover unsold stock.
Hang on, people on Geha were going on forever about 'codes come with an expiration date' — did everyone just forget that?
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Metascore is Metacritic’s aggregated score of outlet reviews, and even the biggest blockbusters essentially never land a perfect score. As one poster in the thread put it, “even Elden Ring only got a 96” — a 100 would be effectively unprecedented. Worth flagging: the thread starter’s claim that IGN, GameSpot, and Eurogamer were all giving GTA6 a “100” came with no link to any outside source, and several commenters in the thread openly questioned or pushed back on whether the claim was even true. The other major thread of debate was sales forecasting. GTA5 is a genuine outlier, holding the Guinness World Record for fastest entertainment product in any medium to pass $1 billion in sales (3 days), but many posters were doubtful GTA6 could top its predecessor’s 200-million-unit lifetime total, pointing to the 13 years since the last release and to changing life circumstances — whether the now-older original player base would keep playing the same way. The claim that “the day-one quota is 50 million units” likewise appeared with no cited source, and some posters asked for evidence. And against the backdrop of current PS5 and Xbox sales both trailing their predecessor generation, the sheer amount of hope being pinned on one single game to revive hardware momentum is itself a telling snapshot of the gap between the industry’s expectations and its actual demand.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of a thread on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (“Geha”) board — a major Japanese anonymous-forum community — titled “Looks Like GTA6 Is About to Get the First-Ever Perfect Metascore.”
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