Red Dead Online was absolutely a big financial disappointment for them. They make an insane amount of money on GTA Online to the tune of half a million per year, and that's without much spending on their part - it's almost pure profit. That's what they were hoping for with RDO, but they put out a half-assed game with very little content, weird restrictions on doing the content that made it harder to play, and in a setting that hasn't been mainstream since I was a kid.
But the base game was huge. They spent about $170 million to make it, which is a ton for a game. But from
Wikipedia.
After the game's announcement in October 2016, analyst Ben Schacter of Macquarie Research estimated it would sell 12 million copies in its first quarter,while analysts at Cowen and Company gave a "conservative" estimate of 15 million sales.
[...]
Shortly before release in October 2018, Schacter estimated the game would sell 15 million copies in its first quarter, though noted investor expectations were at 20 million copies; Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities predicted 25 million. Michael Olson of Piper Jaffray projected revenue between US$400 and US$500 million in the first three days, while Doug Creutz of Cowen Inc. estimated between US$550 and US$600 million.
Highest estimate: $600 million in the first quarter.
The reality: 1.38 billion in the first quarter.
Red Dead Redemption 2 had the largest opening weekend in the history of entertainment, making over US$725 million in revenue in three days, and over 17 million copies shipped in two weeks, exceeding the lifetime sales of Red Dead Redemption. Additionally, Red Dead Redemption 2 was the second-highest-grossing entertainment launch (behind Grand Theft Auto V) and set records for largest-ever pre-orders, largest first-day sales, and largest sales for the first three days in market on PlayStation Network. The share price for Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two Interactive, rose nine percent in the week after release. VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi noted the game likely broke-even in its first week and, based on analyst estimates, would begin to earn a profit by December 2018. The game shipped 23 million copies in 2018, generating US$1.38 billion in revenue, and sales reached 29 million in 2019, 36 million in 2020, 43 million in 2021, 50 million in 2022,and 57 million by September 2023. By dollar sales, it was the best-selling game of the latter half of the 2010s, and the seventh-best-selling game of the decade overall. It is among the best-selling video games.
The base game was absolutely not a financial disappointment. It was only after they tacked on a half-baked multiplayer mode that they thought would bring in GTAO levels of microtransactions that they became disappointed.
My prediction? There's no way they don't make RDR3, just like there will absolutely be another Call of Duty and Fallout. They're cash printing kits. They will, however, either look just at the base game and skip the full-scale multiplayer, or they will change the sequel to better appeal to people...