NielsenIQ data published by The Game Business on September 3 shows UK hardware sales spiked sharply in the seven days following GTA 6's Extended Look on Netflix on August 27. PS5 sales rose 33 percent week on week and Xbox Series S and X climbed 34 percent. Nintendo Switch 2 sales also rose by roughly a third in the same period, despite GTA 6 carrying no announced release for that platform. VGC reported the figures the same day, citing the same NielsenIQ source.
The baseline makes those percentages land harder. UK console hardware sales had been running 14.4 percent below the prior year through late July, with PS5 down 32 percent in that stretch, per Notebookcheck's coverage of the same data. A 33 to 34 percent weekly lift from a single reveal, inside a market already trending downward, points to buyers who had been sitting on the sidelines. By September 3, the surge had nearly cleared out UK PS5 stock: almost every third-party retailer was out of stock and just one PS5 Pro model was available to purchase outright on Sony's own site.
Newzoo analyst Ronan Patrick offered a caveat in the same report from The Game Business, noting that any hardware uplift driven by GTA 6 may not be as significant as it appears, because console prices have risen substantially since launch. The data covers the UK only and no comparable week-on-week figures for other markets have been published. GTA 6 launches November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S.