Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball said the company is "very happy with GTA VI pre-orders" in a post on X on September 24, 2026. The percentage now attached to that post did not come from him, from Xbox, or from Microsoft.
"Tom, we are very happy with GTA VI pre-orders," Ball wrote. He added that the title "is breaking records for XBOX," and said he expects "even more records will be broken throughout the fall."
One clause in that post started the argument. Ball said his "internal analysis shows our share of pre-orders to be matching our share of the console market."
What Ball did and did not quantify
He put no number on that share. Microsoft’s own Xbox leadership roster lists his title as chief strategy officer, a role he took in May 2026.
Ball reports to Xbox chief executive officer Asha Sharma. The two co-signed a June 2026 Xbox Wire post titled Next 100 Days: XBOX Reset, which does not mention Grand Theft Auto VI or pre-orders anywhere.
That reset is the same restructuring under which Microsoft reorganized Xbox and put Activision in charge of Halo. About 70 seconds after the first post, Ball published a second, separate one reading only "Not true."
It replied to a different account. That account had quoted a headline about Xbox being concerned over a PlayStation-skewed split.
Where the percentage actually came from
Minutes after the first post, the journalist Ball was replying to asked him directly what Xbox’s share of the console market is. Ball never answered that reply.
A third account, unconnected to Microsoft, Xbox or Ball, answered the question instead with a single percentage and an image. That reply is the origin of the figure now being repeated as though Ball had supplied it.
It is not a Microsoft number, and not one Ball endorsed. A commercial analytics firm’s public sales tracker has been reported as modeling a roughly three-quarters to one-quarter PlayStation and Xbox split. That is an outside estimate, not a company disclosure.
No platform holder or publisher has published a split
Sony, Microsoft, Rockstar and Take-Two have all published nothing on how pre-orders divide by platform. Take-Two’s press release announcing pre-orders gives the June 25, 2026 start and the $79.99 price, with no volume or platform data.
Take-Two’s Q1 FY2027 earnings release, filed with the SEC and dated August 7, 2026, mentions the game once. Chief executive Strauss Zelnick used it to reiterate a Fiscal 2027 net bookings outlook of $8.0 billion to $8.2 billion.
On the earnings call that day, Zelnick called the level of pre-orders "unprecedented and astonishing." He also tempered it repeatedly, saying "we haven’t sold one unit yet. You can cancel a preorder."
No dollar figure, unit count or platform breakdown appeared on that call. Take-Two has separately said that GTA Online will keep running after the new game arrives.
Rockstar’s own marketing is not symmetrical
Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto VI landing page carries a "Plays Best On" heading followed by a PlayStation logo, in the page’s own markup. Checked on September 26, 2026, the equivalent Rockstar-hosted Xbox addresses returned 404 errors.
That is a checked fact about what sits on Rockstar’s site. It says nothing about pre-order volumes, and whether Rockstar has ever made a comparable claim for the Xbox version is not published.
The details that are confirmed
Rockstar says the game "will now release on Thursday, November 19, 2026," on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Pre-orders opened at midnight local time on June 25.
The standard edition is $79.99 on both platforms, per Rockstar’s own store data. Microsoft’s Xbox Store listing prices the Ultimate Edition at $99.99, a figure Rockstar’s buy page does not state.
Both editions carry the same pre-order bonus in that listing: the Vintage Vice City Pack and one month of GTA+. The cutoff is 23:59:59 on November 19, 2026, and it is separate from the $400 collector’s edition of merchandise.
What is still missing is any first-party number. Neither platform holder publishes a pre-order chart for this game, and no Ultimate Edition share percentage appears in Rockstar or Take-Two material. Store prices and listings were checked on September 26, 2026 and can change.
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