Despite Sony saying GTA 6 "plays best on PS5," Xbox says it's "had record orders" of Rockstar's new game: "People should wait for real data"

With GTA 6 pre-orders finally live, folks are securing their copies of Rockstar's long-awaited new Grand Theft Auto entry – on both the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, apparently.

Although there's no PC release in sight just yet, GTA 6 sales have reportedly been flying on the PS5. Heck, as per IGN's own findings, "PlayStation is outperforming Xbox by a rate of 8-to-1" – although it's important to note that there is some nuance to this (it's only taking into account pre-orders secured via its affiliate links)... but it's still impressive to see the PS5 version doing that much better in any context, admittedly.

We are talking about the console whose creator, Sony, feels confident enough to declare that "Grand Theft Auto 6 plays best on PS5," so I suppose it's not all that surprising – but Xbox doesn't want us to count it out so quickly.

In a new statement to Windows Central from an "Xbox spokesperson," Microsoft requests that people remain mindful of the circumstances surrounding stats like IGN's, as, like I said above, there's nuance to them. "This doesn't represent pre-order data," Xbox writes. "We've had record orders. People should wait for real data and not clicks on affiliate links."

Although it comes across as a bit direct – to say the least – it does imply that Microsoft's console isn't exactly struggling in the GTA 6 pre-order department. I honestly don't doubt that it's seen "record orders," either, simply taking into consideration the 13 years of built-up hype Rockstar's game has behind it.

I am interested to see what the actual numbers involved here are, however – but I doubt we'll get to until the game's November 19 release date draws a bit closer… at least.

As hardware like the Steam Machine gets more expensive, GTA 6 will have fans "eagerly" spending, analyst says.