Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption are Rockstar Games' two flagship series, and Grand Theft Auto VI, due on November 19, 2026, restarts the oldest argument in the studio's catalogue. Take-Two's latest annual report counts more than 225 million copies sold-in of Grand Theft Auto V and more than 80 million of Red Dead Redemption 2.1
One series is a modern crime satire set in fake American cities. The other is a western about outlaws at the end of the frontier. Both come from the same studio, and players have argued about which is better since Red Dead Redemption launched in 2010.
Twelve rankings hold one or both series, from the best game of all time to the biggest moral panic. Nine of them hold both.
Grand Theft Auto takes the lists that count cities, sales and online years; Red Dead takes the ones that count endings, heroes and music.
Red Dead Redemption 2 vs Ocarina of Time: the best video game ever
The broadest list on the site has 35 games, and both series are in it through their latest entries, Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2. Each is a giant, and each shares the field with Tetris, Minecraft, Super Mario Bros. and Half-Life 2.
Neither Rockstar game is the obvious answer here. Ocarina of Time, Nintendo's 1998 Zelda, has been the default pick on all-time lists since 1998, and Minecraft and Tetris arrive with sales the Rockstar pair cannot match.
Red Dead Redemption 2 has the critics' version of the case: a story-led open world that took eight years after the first game. Grand Theft Auto V has the players' version, a game still selling on its third console generation.
GTA V vs Red Dead Redemption 2: the best Rockstar game
The cleanest version of the question is the one Rockstar's own catalogue asks. This ranking holds twelve Rockstar titles, including Max Payne, Bully and L.A. Noire, and six of them carry the Grand Theft Auto name. Red Dead Redemption has two entries, the 2010 original and the 2018 sequel.
Grand Theft Auto V brings the commercial record. Take-Two reported more than $1 billion in worldwide retail sales in its first three days in September 2013, at the time the fastest any entertainment product had reached that mark.2
Red Dead Redemption 2 came closest to it. Its October 2018 launch earned over $725 million in retail sell-through across its opening weekend, the second-biggest three-day launch in entertainment after Grand Theft Auto V.3
The case against reading sales as quality is on the same list: San Andreas, Vice City and Grand Theft Auto IV each have fans who call them the series' peak.
Three Rockstar games among the best of the 2010s
On the decade list, the Red Dead series outnumbers Grand Theft Auto for once. Of 54 games, three come from Rockstar: Red Dead Redemption from 2010, Grand Theft Auto V from 2013 and Red Dead Redemption 2 from 2018.
Red Dead Redemption opened the decade and its sequel closed it. Grand Theft Auto released one numbered game in those years.
The Witcher 3, Breath of the Wild and Skyrim came out in the same ten years, each a fair pick over either Rockstar series.
GTA V vs God of War: the greatest PS4 games
The PlayStation 4 is the one console both Rockstar flagships share. Red Dead Redemption 2 launched on it in 2018, and Grand Theft Auto V arrived in November 2014, a year after its PS3 debut, with a new first-person mode. Both sit on this list of 37 PS4 games.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was built for the machine from the start, and on PS4 it looked like nothing Rockstar had made before. Grand Theft Auto V counts as a PS4 game through a remaster, which is the weak point in its case.
The heaviest competition is Sony's own. God of War won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2018, the night Red Dead Redemption 2 won Best Narrative, and FromSoftware's Bloodborne, Sucker Punch's samurai epic and Naughty Dog's Last of Us sequel were all made for PlayStation first.
Arthur Morgan vs CJ: the greatest video game protagonist
Each series sends one hero to this list of 16. Red Dead Redemption 2's Arthur Morgan stands beside Mario, Master Chief and Lara Croft, and Grand Theft Auto sends Carl "CJ" Johnson of San Andreas, the only Grand Theft Auto lead on the list.
Arthur Morgan has the awards. Roger Clark won Best Performance at The Game Awards 2018 for the role, one of four prizes Red Dead Redemption 2 took that night.4
CJ has the affection. San Andreas came out in 2004, and his return to Grove Street opens the game with a line fans still quote. The counter to Arthur is that CJ carried a whole state and a whole era of the series without an award show to back him.
Vice City vs Night City: where Grand Theft Auto outbuilds Red Dead
Video game cities are Grand Theft Auto territory. Three of its cities are on this list of 29: Liberty City, Los Santos and Vice City. Red Dead Redemption has one, Saint Denis, the New Orleans-inspired city of Red Dead Redemption 2, set in 1899.
Vice City has a second claim this month. The next numbered game, out on November 19, returns the series to a modern version of its 1980s Miami pastiche, which is the image this ranking shows.
Cyberpunk 2077's Night City is the strongest rival from outside Rockstar, with Rapture, City 17 and Midgar behind it. Red Dead's defence is that it was never a city series: its best places are plains, mountains and swamps, and no list of cities can count those.
Red Dead Redemption vs GTA IV: the best video game ending
Rockstar endings have a habit of killing someone the player cares about, and this list of 31 endings holds three of them. Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2 are both here, and Grand Theft Auto's only entry is its fourth numbered game.
The 2010 Red Dead Redemption ending is the one players still bring up. John Marston is gunned down by government agents at his own ranch, and the epilogue hands control to his son Jack, who goes looking for the man responsible. Red Dead Redemption 2 closes on Arthur Morgan's death, shaped by how honourably he was played.
Grand Theft Auto IV ends on a choice between a deal and revenge, and the choice decides whether Niko Bellic loses his cousin Roman or Kate McReary. Both endings leave Niko where he started, which was the point.
Metal Gear Solid 3, Shadow of the Colossus, Portal 2 and The Last of Us lead the rest, and Joel's story carries the same kind of moral weight in a lie told to a child.
GTA Online vs Red Dead Online: the live-service split
Both games shipped an online world that kept running after the story ended, and both appear among these 28 live-service games. GTA Online launched beside Grand Theft Auto V in 2013 and was still getting heists in 2026. Red Dead Online started as a beta in 2018 and became a standalone game in 2020.
The two paths split in July 2022. Rockstar told players it would stop adding major themed updates to Red Dead Online and moved development toward the next Grand Theft Auto, keeping only smaller missions and events.5
That decision is the plainest win Grand Theft Auto has over Red Dead anywhere in this article, and Rockstar made it, not the players. GTA Online kept a decade of updates; Red Dead Online kept its frontier and a loyal crowd.
Around them stand the genre's giants: World of Warcraft, Fortnite, Final Fantasy XIV, Destiny 2 and EVE Online, which has run since 2003.
Red Dead Redemption 2 vs GTA V: the most overrated video game
Every famous game collects a backlash, and this list of 17 holds both Rockstar flagships. The two Rockstar games sit next to Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, The Last of Us and Fortnite, games that sold or scored too well to escape the question.
The charge against Red Dead Redemption 2 is pace. Its long rides, slow animations and heavy controls are the most common complaints, and they come from players who often finished it.
The charge against Grand Theft Auto V is ubiquity. A game re-released on PS3, PS4 and PS5 can feel like it never left, and some players say Rockstar spent a decade selling GTA Online instead of a new story.
Grand Theft Auto IV is here too, a 2008 game with a Metacritic score of 98 that many fans rank below San Andreas. The defence for both series is the same: a backlash this size needs an audience this size first.
Red Dead Redemption 2's soundtrack, and no GTA
This list of 15 soundtracks has one Rockstar entry, and it is Red Dead Redemption 2. Woody Jackson and Daniel Lanois shared Best Score/Music for its music at the 2018 Game Awards.4
Grand Theft Auto has no entry at all, and the reason is structural. Its music comes through in-game radio stations full of licensed songs, from Flash FM in Vice City to Radio Los Santos, and a list of composed scores does not count a car radio.
Fans of Grand Theft Auto's radio would say a playlist that defined a decade deserves its own category.
John Marston, and the father Grand Theft Auto never sent
One list sorts game heroes by how well they parent, and Red Dead Redemption's John Marston is on it. The 2010 game ends with Marston back on his ranch with his wife Abigail and his son Jack, which is where the father part of his story happens.
Grand Theft Auto has no one here. Its closest candidate, Michael De Santa of Grand Theft Auto V, is a father of two whose family spends most of the game avoiding him, which is a joke the series makes on purpose.
Marston shares the list with Kratos, Joel Miller of The Last of Us and Lee Everett of The Walking Dead. Joel and Kratos are the harder opponents: both games built their whole story around the child.
San Andreas and the Hot Coffee scandal: GTA's moral panic
Only one of the two series has ever been a national controversy. Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas are both on this list of the games that caused the biggest moral panics. Red Dead Redemption is not on it.
San Andreas earned its place in 2005, when the Hot Coffee mod unlocked a sex mini-game left in the game's files. The ratings board ESRB moved it to Adults Only, retailers pulled it, and the US Federal Trade Commission later settled charges with Take-Two and Rockstar.
Mortal Kombat, Night Trap and Doom held the same role in the 1990s, and Manhunt, another Rockstar game, followed in 2003. Red Dead's westerns have plenty of violence, but nobody held a Senate hearing about them.
Rockstar's two answers to the open world
Grand Theft Auto is the series people keep playing for a decade, through heists, remasters and three console generations. Red Dead is the one they finish and keep talking about, for Arthur Morgan, John Marston and a ranch at the end of an era. Grand Theft Auto VI will show whether Rockstar wants one game to do both.
All twelve rankings are decided pair by pair, the head-to-head method behind the site. Pick the Rockstar matchup you care about, or build a ranking for the one this article left out.
More rankings, more angles
- Grand Theft Auto: Best Game Ever? Where It Lands on 15 Lists — the series alone, from GTA III to VI
- PlayStation vs Xbox vs Nintendo: Which Is Best? 14 Lists — the consoles both Rockstar series ran on
- Super Mario vs The Legend of Zelda: Which Series Is Better? 16 Lists — Nintendo's in-house rivalry, the same question
Sources
- Take-Two Interactive — Form 10-K for fiscal 2026: Grand Theft Auto V sold-in over 225 million units, Red Dead Redemption 2 more than 80 million, Grand Theft Auto VI planned for November 19, 2026: sec.gov (checked 2026-11-08)
- Take-Two Interactive — press release, September 20, 2013: Grand Theft Auto V passes $1 billion in worldwide retail sales in three days: sec.gov (checked 2026-11-08)
- Take-Two Interactive — results release, February 6, 2019: Red Dead Redemption 2's opening weekend of over $725 million in retail sell-through, second-biggest three-day launch after Grand Theft Auto V: sec.gov (checked 2026-11-08)
- The Game Awards — 2018 winners: Red Dead Redemption 2 for Best Narrative, Best Score/Music, Best Audio Design and Best Performance (Roger Clark): thegameawards.com (checked 2026-11-08)
- Video Games Chronicle — July 8, 2022: Rockstar scales back major Red Dead Online updates as resources move to the next Grand Theft Auto: videogameschronicle.com (checked 2026-11-08)