The hype surrounding Red Dead Redemption 2 has been constant ever since it was first announced way back in 2016, and with Rockstar putting out more official information more frequently it has been mounting.
Many people have already declared 2018 the "year of Red Dead" even though launch is months away and there are plenty of other high-profile AAA titles to be released.
The question of how many copies Red Dead Redemption 2 is projected to sell has been a frequently asked one, even if getting it right is impossible due to numerous unknowable factors.
According to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, they have estimates for the investors but don't much care about exact numbers internally. A few public estimates have also rolled in.
Red Dead Redemption 2 will be competing with several major AAA franchises such as the annual Call of Duty and FIFA release, as well as the new Battlefield game that has already kicked up a storm due to its inclusion of playable female characters in a WWII setting (which is absolutely accurate, by the way, and haters merely use an otherwise incorrect historical accuracy argument to thinly veil their misogyny).
E3 2018 showed just how scared other publishers seem to be of Red Dead Redemption 2.
Many major titles shown off are set to release in early 2019, possibly because the publishers didn't want these games to share a quarter with Red Dead Redemption 2. For example, the new Bioware IP Anthem being released next February. Compared to this, Ubisoft launching Assassin's Creed: Odyssey in October a bold power-move!
However, if analyst firm Piper Jaffray is to be believed, Red Dead Redemption 2 won't snag best selling game of 2018 like so many fans believe it will. According to the company's most recent estimates, Call of Duty, FIFA and Battlefield will all outsell Rockstar's Wild West epic.
Call of Duty is projected to move 21.5 million copies by March 31st, 2019, while FIFA is set to beat that with 22 million copies. Battlefield 5 (denoted as 6 in the charts because Battlefield 1 was denoted as 5) is closer with 16 million copies. Red Dead Redemption 2 itself is estimated to move 15.5 million copies by the end of March.
Pre-orders for Red Dead Redemption 2 have been open since announcement, and the game is so hot that Amazon's pre-allocated stock for PS4 even sold out once. Clearly, a lot of people plan on picking up Red Dead Redemption 2, and most analyst firms vastly underestimated the success of Grand Theft Auto 5.
Of course, nobody is expecting Red Dead Redemption 2 to match GTA 5's success, but we have a feeling that the game will be pulling better numbers than Piper Jaffray thinks.
