Max Payne 3 ships about 3M units to retail

Take-Two Interactive‘s Max Payne 3 has shipped about 3 million units to stores since its debut on May 15, the company announced today.

It remains to be seen how many of those units will be sold through to consumers, given that the title debuted on the same day as another blockbuster, Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo III.

Max Payne 3 shipped internationally on May 18 and will be available for the PC on June 1. Downloadable content (DLC) will be available starting in June and extend through the fall. Max Payne shipped on mobile platforms April 12. Those mobile platforms can play the same version as the original Max Payne, which shipped on the PC in 2001.

Strauss Zelnick, chairman and chief executive of Take-Two, said that Max Payne 3 had received outstanding reviews and is shaping up to be another big hit for Take-Two’s Rockstar Games division.

In a call with analysts, Zelnick said the company was pleased with the reception. Karl Slatoff, chief operating officer, said the multiplayer version of Max Payne 3 has been getting a lot of use and is generating buzz.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.