GTA Vice City Stories (2006): The Slow Seller That Kept On

Vice City Stories is the GTA that looked like a step down and turned out not to be. Critics rated it a little below Liberty City Stories on both platforms. Take-Two's 2008 numbers had it at little more than half the earlier game's sales. Then it kept selling for two decades, and by February 2026 a Take-Two legal filing was putting it above seven million copies. This page tracks that curve and checks what Rockstar promised before launch against what reviewers found.

At a glance

What is counted, and how

Dates. At E3 in May 2006 the game was dated Oct 17, 2006 for North America and Oct 20 for Europe (Game Developer). Metacritic lists the PSP release as Oct 31, 2006, and Take-Two's February 2007 release confirms an October launch. So it arrived 14 days after the first date given (Oct 17 to Oct 31: 31 - 17 = 14). We print the PSP date from Metacritic because we found no Take-Two release with the day on it. The European PSP date is left out for the same reason.

PS2 gap. Oct 31, 2006 to Mar 6, 2007 is 30 days (rest of November counted from Nov 1) + 31 (December) + 31 (January) + 28 (February) + 6 = 126 days.

Sales. The 4.5 million comes from a Take-Two investor slide of GTA units by release year (2006 is the Vice City Stories year; see /library/gta-liberty-city-stories for how we read that slide). The "over seven million worldwide" comes from a 2026 Take-Two trademark filing against a sandwich business called Vice City Subs, as reported by Game File. Neither number splits PSP from PS2.

Reviews. We could not open IGN's or Eurogamer's own review pages for this check, so IGN's score is taken from Metacritic's listing, and Eurogamer is left out.

Left out: later re-releases, platform-by-platform sales and award claims we could not open.

The setup

Vic Vance is Lance Vance's elder brother, and the game follows him in 1984 Vice City, two years before GTA Vice City (Pocket Gamer, Aug 2006). Pocket Gamer's reviewer found the story less engaging than earlier GTAs and Vic's characterization weaker, with a darker tone. Past that, the plot is spoiler territory, and we stop here.

What it changed

In August 2006 Rockstar's pitch, as reported by Pocket Gamer, was a bigger map than Vice City's, swimming, jet skis and helicopters, a multi-tiered mission structure deeper than Liberty City Stories', and a multiplayer mode building on the first PSP game. It also gave up seamless indoor-outdoor transitions and character or vehicle customization. Here is that pitch against what two reviews later said:

The empire system was the headline feature, and reviewers were lukewarm on it. We describe it here only in general terms: you take over properties, they pay out, and you run missions to grow them. One related idea had a future. In 2008 Dan Houser told Edge that Rockstar had "played with it a little in Vice City Stories", referring to the trading side-game that became a central system in Chinatown Wars (reported by Shacknews).

Reception

Metacritic's one-line excerpt of IGN's review calls it "Essentially more of the same, for better or for worse." That sums up the critical mood. Against Liberty City Stories, the gap is small but consistent: 88 - 86 = 2 points lower on PSP, and 78 - 75 = 3 points lower on PS2. Take-Two's 2008 slide, using its own Metacritic averages, had the two at 82% and 81%.

Awards were kinder. In October 2007 it won The Games Radar Handheld Game of the Year at the Golden Joysticks (bit-tech).

Legacy: the long tail

Arithmetic: 7 - 4.5 = at least 2.5 million more copies between March 2008 and February 2026. That is 2.5 / 4.5 = 55.6% growth on the 2008 figure, at a minimum, since "over" seven million puts a floor on the number. In 2008 the game stood at 4.5 / 8 = 56.3% of Liberty City Stories. The counts are years apart and measured differently, so we don't put the two games side by side for 2026. The direction is still clear: the second Stories game was not the weak seller its 2008 number suggested.

It also became a yardstick. When Chinatown Wars debuted in the UK in March 2009, MCV measured it against Vice City Stories' PSP launch and found it had sold around half as much.

Trivia

• The August 2006 preview listed returning locations such as the Ocean Beach theme park and its "Chunder Wheel" ride (Pocket Gamer).
• Take-Two's 2026 sales figure appeared in a dispute over the "Vice City" name, a sign of how closely Take-Two still guards it. More on the city at /library/vice-city.
• Series sales context: /library/gta-sales-history. Score context: /library/gta-review-scores.

Sources

• Game Developer, E3: Rockstar Announces GTA: Vice City Stories For PSP, May 10 2006
• Pocket Gamer, More details emerge about GTA: Vice City Stories on PSP, Aug 1 2006
• Take-Two (Business Wire), Vice City Stories for PS2, Feb 7 2007
• Take-Two, Board recommendation to reject EA offer, Mar 26 2008, slide 12 (SEC Exhibit 99.1)
• Game File, Stephen Totilo, Feb 27 2026
• Metacritic, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
• Metacritic, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
• Pocket Gamer, VCS PSP review, Nov 9 2006
• VideoGamer, VCS PS2 review
• bit-tech, Golden Joystick winners announced, Oct 30 2007
• Guinness World Records, Best-selling PSP videogame
• MCV, UK charts: Resident Evil 5 fends off GTA, Mar 23 2009
• Shacknews, Grand Theft Auto DS Sports Drug Dealing Mini Game, Sep 24 2008