Red Dead Redemption 2 Just Passed Wii Sports in All-Time Sales and It's Still Accelerating
Red Dead Redemption 2 hit 85 million copies sold as of March 2026. That's not a typo. A game from 2018 just knocked Wii Sports off the all-time sales list and took the number three spot. Behind only Minecraft and GTA 5. Let that sit for a second.
The Number That Shouldn't Be Possible
GTA 5 is at 230 million. That's a different conversation entirely. But RDR2 at 85 million, seven years post-launch, is genuinely weird in the best way. And not weird in a "slow drip of modest sales" way. The game sold more copies in the last 12 months than it did in any 12-month window since its launch year. It's selling faster now than it was in 2019, 2020, 2021, any of it.
I don't have a clean explanation for that. Some of it is deep discounts. Some of it is people finally getting around to it. Some of it is probably word of mouth that never stops because the game genuinely earns it. Whatever the reason, the trajectory is backwards from what you'd expect and it's working.
Rockstar Still Hasn't Given It a 60fps Patch
Here's the thing that gets me. Red Dead Redemption 2 runs at 30fps on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. No 60fps patch. No next-gen upgrade. A game currently selling at peak velocity, sitting at number three all time, and Rockstar hasn't touched the frame rate on hardware that could obviously handle more.
This could mean they don't think it's worth the engineering time. One possibility is they're saving a "remastered" version as a future revenue event. Either way, you're playing one of the best-looking games ever made at 30fps in 2026 if you're on console. PC players are fine. Console players are just... living with it.
It doesn't stop people from buying it, apparently. But it's a weird choice to leave on the table.
What This Means for Red Dead 3
Dan Houser, Rockstar co-founder and the guy who wrote most of what made these games matter, said Red Dead Redemption 3 "will probably happen." Roger Clark, who played Arthur Morgan, said back in 2023 he was "certain" fans would see it "one day."
Neither of those quotes is a green light. Houser left Rockstar in 2020. Clark is an actor who voiced a character, not a developer with inside knowledge. But the fact that both of them are out here saying versions of "yeah, probably" is at least consistent with a franchise Rockstar clearly hasn't walked away from.
At 85 million copies and accelerating, they'd be leaving money on the table not to make it. That's not a creative argument, it's just math.
The Actual Point
If you haven't played Red Dead Redemption 2, the sales number isn't the argument. The argument is that it's one of the few games where I genuinely forgot I was playing a game for stretches of it. Arthur Morgan is one of the best written protagonists in the medium. Roger Clark's performance carries a lot of that.
The game is long. The opening is slow. The world is huge and sometimes inconvenient on purpose. None of that is accidental and all of it is worth it.
The fact that it's still the third best-selling game of all time and picking up speed in year seven just confirms what people who played it already knew.
Source: Ign