Arguing about the greatest video game trailers used to be pure taste. Then Grand Theft Auto 6 arrived and gave the argument numbers: Guinness World Records, broken Hollywood benchmarks and view counts no game had ever touched.
So here is the honest version of the list: the trailers whose impact can actually be measured, and what the measurements say.
Key Takeaways
- GTA 6's first trailer set three Guinness records in 24 hours, including 90.4 million views
- Its second trailer hit about 475 million views across platforms in a day, beating Deadpool and Wolverine's 365 million
- GTA 5's trailer needed 12 years to reach 101 million views; GTA 6 passed it in about a day
- Only K-pop has beaten gaming's biggest debut on YouTube's 24-hour charts
The record holder: GTA 6, twice over
When Rockstar dropped the first GTA 6 trailer in December 2023, WN Hub reports it broke three Guinness-recognised records in a day: most-viewed game reveal in 24 hours at 90.42 million, most-liked game reveal at 8.9 million likes, and most-viewed non-music YouTube video in a day.
The sequel trailer in May 2025 played a different sport entirely. Per TechRadar, it gathered about 475 million views across platforms in 24 hours, blowing past the 365 million that Deadpool and Wolverine's trailer managed, which had been the biggest video launch anywhere.
The old guard it dethroned
The previous generation of giants looks modest beside that. WN Hub's tally: GTA 5's debut trailer collected 101 million views over twelve years as Rockstar's most-watched video, with Red Dead Redemption 2's best trailers in the 34 to 37 million range.
GTA 6 passed its predecessor's lifetime total in roughly a day. No other reveal in entertainment history has compressed attention like that.
The ceiling gaming still has not broken
There is one audience gaming has never out-drawn. As SI's video game desk noted, BTS's Butter music video holds the all-time 24-hour YouTube record at 108.2 million views, which kept the first GTA 6 trailer at number one only in the non-music category.
PC Gamer put it bluntly at the time: the trailer crushed MrBeast's 59 million-view benchmark, but K-pop remains undefeated.
What the numbers teach about great trailers
- Scarcity works. Rockstar goes years between uploads, so each one becomes an event.
- Platform strategy shapes records: trailer one was YouTube-exclusive, trailer two went everywhere and 5x'd the number.
- A dated, in-engine look beats a cinematic sizzle for trust, and both record-breakers showed the actual game world.
- View counts measure anticipation, not quality. The game still has to cash the cheque.
Somewhere there is a quieter list of trailers that were simply beautiful films, and it would look different from this one.
But as a measure of what gaming now means to mainstream culture, half a billion views in a day for a 90-second clip says more than any think piece.
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