Rockstar and Take-Two's critical hit Red Dead Redemption is the biggest-selling pre-order video of the year on Amazon UK, the online retailer said Thursday. The open world cowboy western-inspired game releases Friday, May 21 in the UK and currently holds three of the top five positions on Amazon.co.uk's best-selling video game charts with the Xbox 360 version (#1), standard PlayStation 3 version (#2) and PS3 limited edition version (#4), based on pre-orders alone. Amazon's charts also include already-released titles. "This is undoubtedly the most hotly anticipated video game of the year so far," said Chris Poad, director of video games at Amazon.co.uk. "Demand has risen significantly over the last week as excitement and buzz around the game has built, making it one of the most successful titles we have seen on Amazon.co.uk this year before it has even been released." Red Dead Redemption is also a critical darling, earning a 95 on game review aggregator Metacritic. In the UK, Rockstar said that it would be backing the game's launch by spending reportedly large amounts of cash for pre-release advertising on television, in print and on movie screens. Publisher Take-Two has also been heavily advertising the game in North America. Developed by Rockstar San Diego, the game, a sequel to 2004's Red Dead Revolver, is Take-Two's latest attempt to establish a franchise that serve as a financial pillar alongside Grand Theft Auto. This week, Cowen group analyst Doug Creutz raised his year-one sales estimates for the game to 4 million units from 2.2 million, based on "very strong pre-order demand."