Borderlands 4 expected to sell 6 million units at launch, Gearbox has extremely high confidence

Gearbox and Take-Two have high aspirations for Borderlands 4 sales.

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In a recent interview with Insider Gaming, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford said some very optimistic things about sales figures. Borderlands 4 was embroiled in a pricing controversy just months ago, with gamers fearing an $80 price tag due to comments from Pitchford...but the game ended up priced at $70. Now with that hurdle out of the way, both Gearbox and Take-Two expect big numbers.

According to the interview, Pitchford excitedly states that Borderlands 4 will push the entire franchise past the 100 million sales mark: "A lot of people predicted that Borderlands wasn't going to work. Now here we are with [Borderlands having become a] franchise. We will break 100 million units with this launch, easy."

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Take-Two's latest Q1'25 report gave an update on Borderlands franchise figures; the investor brief notes that the shooter-looter has currently shipped over 94 million units worldwide. A quick bit of math shows Borderlands 4 is expected to sell around 6 million copies, give or take.

Timing is critical, and we have to wonder exactly what the sales estimates are both at launch and maybe 2-3 years from now.

Borderlands 3 shipped over 23 million units since its launch in September 2019--over the last few years, Borderlands 3 could be found at stores like Five Below for $5.

Based on the predecessor's success, I'd imagine that Take-Two/2K could be guiding towards selling at least 5 million copies at launch. Another key point to remember is that the console market installed base is not as big as it was when Borderlands 3 came out; estimates show that the Series X/S is behind the Xbox One, and the PS5 is only slightly behind the PS4 insofar as shipments.

Borderlands 4 releases on September 12, 2025 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. It's also coming to the Switch 2.