UK PS5 sales rose 33% the week of the Extended Look, and so did the Switch 2
NielsenIQ data published on September 3 has UK PS5 sales up 33% week on week and Xbox Series X and S up 34% in the week Rockstar put GTA 6 on Netflix. It is the first sales figure anyone has attached to the Extended Look. It also shows the Switch 2 up about a third in the same week for an unrelated reason, which is the part the headlines dropped.
UK PS5 sales were up 33% week on week, and Xbox Series X and S up 34%, in the week Rockstar released the GTA 6 Extended Look. The figures come from NielsenIQ and were published by The Game Business on September 3, 2026.
This is the first actual sales data attached to the August 27 showing. When we covered the PS5 Pro selling out in the US, we said plainly that nobody had published numbers tying the stock-out to the game. Now somebody has, so here is what the numbers do and do not establish.
The figures
| Platform | Week-on-week change |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 5 | +33% |
| Xbox Series X and S | +34% |
| Nintendo Switch 2 | +33% |
The Switch 2 line is the one that did not travel. It rose by about the same third in the same week, and GTA 6 is not coming to it. NielsenIQ attributes that rise to buyers moving ahead of a Switch 2 price increase that landed that week.
What that means for the GTA 6 read
It does not mean the GTA 6 bump is fake. A 27-minute gameplay showing that pulled 31.1 million views on Netflix in its first days plausibly moves consoles, the PS5 Pro genuinely went out of stock across UK retail, and Sony’s site was down to a single directly purchasable Pro model with most third-party retailers empty.
It does mean the 33% on its own does not isolate GTA 6, and the honest version of the headline is narrower than the one that ran. Three consoles rose about a third in one week. One of them rose for a reason that has nothing to do with Rockstar. That is a warning about the measurement, not about the game.
Two further limits worth stating:
- No raw units were published. These are percentage moves off an unstated base. PS5 sells more units than Xbox Series in the UK, so the near-identical percentages describe very different absolute numbers.
- NielsenIQ published timing, not causation. The data shows the sales bump coincided with the video release. It carries no analysis of pricing or stock availability as competing explanations.
The base those percentages sit on
A third off a weak week is not a boom, and UK console hardware was having a weak year. Through the end of July, UK console sales were down 14.4% year on year, with PS5 down 32% and Xbox Series X and S up 3.1%.
So a one-week rise of a third puts PS5 somewhere closer to where it was a year ago rather than clearly above it. Ronan Patrick of Newzoo put the ceiling on it directly:
The PS5 in inflation-adjusted terms is 67% more expensive [than at launch], and Xbox is twice as expensive.
That is the structural problem a trailer does not fix. US average console hardware prices hit $502 in May, up 14% in a year, with the PS5 up 33% year on year to $672 and Xbox Series up 22% to $524. Hardware that keeps getting more expensive caps how much a software launch can lift it, however big the software is.
The Xbox detail
Xbox Series X and S rose slightly more than PS5, at 34%, which is worth a note given how PlayStation-weighted the marketing has been. The Extended Look was captured on PS5 and stated as such, Sony ran the “plays best on PS5” positioning, and the only themed controllers announced so far are DualSense. Microsoft has announced no GTA 6 hardware of any kind.
GTA 6 is a simultaneous release on both, on November 19, 2026, with no announced timed exclusivity either way. Buyers appear to have understood that.
Which console to buy it on, and what each one actually delivers, is covered on the console requirements page. The frame rate question that keeps getting folded into that decision is on the frame rate page.
Sources
Source: www.thegamebusiness.com
← Back to all news