GTA Trilogy didn't need to be polished to sell amazingly well

techradar.com:

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — Definitive Edition, Rockstar’s remastered collection of GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas, was a huge commercial success despite being lambasted by critics and players for its litany of bugs, technical issues, and questionable art style.

Speaking during the publisher’s quarterly earnings report, and spotted by PC Gamer, Take-Two chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick said the GTA Trilogy was a significant sales win.

“Rockstar Games celebrated the 20th anniversary of the launch of Grand Theft Auto III with the release of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition for current and prior-gen consoles and PC via the Rockstar Games Launcher, with the title significantly exceeding our commercial expectations,” Zelnick said.

Some clever maths by VGC seems to have revealed just how big a commercial success the GTA Trilogy was. Take-Two’s earnings report shows the entire GTA series has sold 370 million units to date, up from 355 million last November — that’s a 15 million difference. 

GTA V accounted for 5 million of those additional sales (the game has now sold 160 million units, up from 155 million last quarter), meaning another game in the GTA series was responsible for the remaining 10 million. With no other major GTA title releasing in the last quarter, it’s likely the GTA Trilogy accounts for the majority of those remaining 10 million sales, give or take a few sales of older GTA games.

The GTA Trilogy isn’t going away, either. The game will release for iOS and Android sometime in the first half of 2022, although, hopefully, with significantly fewer glitches.

The GTA Trilogy’s high sales figures may come as a surprise in light of its exceedingly poor launch. The game was criticized across the