With much focus having shifted to the inbound Xbox One late last year, Microsoft has revealed that Rockstar’s GTA 5 helped disguise otherwise low Xbox 360 software sales.
Giving a final lease of life to the outgoing Xbox 360 and PS3, GTA 5 became the largest entertainment launch of all time when it launched back in September, generating a staggering $800 million on day one, a figure which rose to exceed $1 billion in just three days.
Now, speaking exclusively with TrustedReviews, an official Microsoft spokesperson has suggested the phenomenal GTA 5 sales helped hide the Xbox 360’s poor software performances elsewhere across the board.
“GTA 5 masked quite a big drop in software sales for both the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles,” an internal Xbox software manager for Microsoft told us.
Stating that the game shifted “ridiculous numbers,” they added that the console had been experiencing severely reduced software sales as gamers held out for the upcoming next-gen offerings.
As well as highlighting GTA 5 as a saviour of the Xbox 360’s year end software sales, the Microsoft spokesperson singled out Minecraft as another exceptionally strong performer.
“Week in, week out Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has been a phenomenon,” they said.
With GTA 5 still locked exclusively to Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles, earlier this week retailers hinted that a GTA 5 PC release could be announced tomorrow, January 31.
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