“Red Dead Redemption 2” broke records in its first three days on sale, pulling in more than $725 million in worldwide retail sales and achieving the biggest opening weekend in the history of entertainment, developer Rockstar Games announced.
That tops the highest-grossing movie in history, “Avengers: Infinity Wars,” which earned more than $640 million during its opening weekend earlier this year. But “Red Dead Redemption 2” still isn’t the highest grossing entertainment launch of all time. That honor also goes to Rockstar Games for “Grand Theft Auto V,” which earned more than $1 billion in sell-through in its first three days. Because “Grand Theft Auto V” launched on a Tuesday, it left the door open for “Red Dead Redemption 2’s” — which launched on a Friday — record-setting weekend.
Rockstar also reports that according to Sony Interactive Entertainment, “Red Dead Redemption 2” set records for highest ever pre-orders, highest day one sales and highest sales for the first three days in market on the PlayStation Network.
“Red Dead Redemption 2” is currently the highest critically reviewed game on the PlayStation 4, with an average score of 97 on Metacritic, and the top game on Xbox One, also with an average score of 97 on Metacritic.
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In Variety’s review of the game we wrote that it was Rockstar Games’ best creation to date and that the game makes “an incredible first impression.”
“It is one of the most visually stunning environments ever executed in a video game, and that’s not a statement spoken with hyperbole. It’s a technical tour de force, establishing its bona fides as its characters drive new obvious paths through snow and mud, as light filters through an atmosphere that effectively depicts the enormous scale of its environments. Its characters are incredibly detailed and animated, painstakingly executed in a way that brings to mind the big-budget console exclusives companies like Sony and Microsoft use to sell their own hardware. You can see the muscles work under the velvet-y skin of a horse.”
You can read more about the game’s tumultuous creation, how it was written, how to cheat in the game and more in Variety’s complete guide to “Red Dead Redemption 2.”
The game follows Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang as they rob, steal and fight their way across the rugged heartland of America in order to survive. Following a botched robbery in the western town of Blackwater, the gang is forced to flee and, with federal agents and the best bounty hunters in the nation massing on their heels, deepening internal divisions threaten to tear the gang apart, leaving Arthur to make a choice between his own ideals and loyalty to the gang who raised him.
