UK PS5 sales rose 33% week-on-week and Xbox Series X|S sales 34% in the week of the GTA 6 Netflix showcase, according to Nielsen IQ figures relayed by The Game Business. The same week, Nintendo Switch 2 rose by about a third as well, and Switch 2 is not getting the game.

Christopher Dring published the numbers on 3 September 2026: "According to Nielsen IQ, UK PS5 sales jumped 33% last week, while Xbox Series S and X sales leapt 34%." These are third-party retail panel figures, not sales reported by Sony, Microsoft or Rockstar, and they are week-on-week rather than year-on-year. The same piece notes that only one PS5 Pro model can be bought outright from Sony's own site, with almost every third-party retailer out of stock, so the ceiling that week was partly supply rather than demand. Two pieces of context keep the jump in proportion. First, the year it sits inside: UK console hardware to the end of July was down 14.4% year-on-year, with PS5 specifically down 32%, so one week at plus a third does not reverse the trend. Second, the confound, which is in Dring's own text and which the retellings dropped: "Nintendo Switch 2 also saw sales rise a third, ahead of the console's price rise this week." Nintendo confirmed on 20 August that the UK Switch 2 price went from £395.99 to £419.99 on 1 September, so buyers had a documented reason to move early on a console that has nothing to do with Grand Theft Auto. A week in which a machine without the game grows by the same third as the two machines with it is not a clean measurement of the showcase, which is why this sits as an estimate rather than a confirmed effect.

Updated: 2026-09-04