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GTA V was the third best-selling physical game in Europe last year - GfK

And it's into its fifth year

The phenomenal on-going success of Grand Theft Auto V continued into its forth and fifth year, GfK reveals.

In Europe, GTA V was the third best-selling physical video game. That's according to combined data from over 15 European territories, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and the United Kingdom.

GTA V was only outsold in 2017 by FIFA 18 (No.1) and Call of Duty: WWII (No.2). That means the game outperformed other key 2017 launches such as Star Wars Battlefront II, Assassin's Creed Origins and Destiny 2.

Take-Two's success with the title has helped the firm deliver impressive financial results despite not releasing a major game outside of its core annual sports titles. GTA V includes Grand Theft Auto Online, which includes a micro transaction model that has been a major contributor to Take-Two's bottom line. According to Rockstar, December saw more players play GTA Online than in any previous months - over four years since it came out. More than 85 million copies of GTA V has been shipped to retailers worldwide.

In the US, GTA V is the best-selling video game of all time, according to sales tracker NPD.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick speculated on the success of GTA V in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz last year. He said: "The reason, in my opinion, why GTA V has sold 80m units, and GTA Online had another record year is because it stands alone in the generation. In every prior generation, there have been other titles that have clustered around GTA from a quality point-of-view. That's clearly not the case now. If you are over 17 and you have a new generation console, you have GTA. Otherwise we wouldn't have shipped 80m units. Can any other title achieve that? It seems unlikely."

The data is the first combined sales chart from GfK, and highlights the company's pan-European strength ahead of the expected reveal of a new rival European chart that will include digital data for the first time.