Location: Home Page » Grand Theft Auto IV » News » GTA – 926,000 copies sold in first full chart week, but Iron Man flick unaffected

Grand Theft Auto IV - GTA – 926,000 copies sold in first full chart week, but Iron Man flick unaffected

Wednesday 7th of May, 2008 - 13:18:44 GMT

Charttrack released the sales figures for GTA IV as it was launched on a Tuesday but incorporated a bank holiday weekend, allowing even greater sales. The stats firm also finalised its day-one sales figure from 609,000 last week, to 631,000. In other words, another 22,000 copies were sold during retail business hours from shops throughout the country. We observed copies on eBay, bidding up to £55 for Xbox and £62 for PS3 respectively.

The final day one figure shows the evolution of the franchise's popularity, since San Andreas took a whole week to reach 677,000 in the UK.

55% (514,000) of the full week sales occurred on the Xbox 360 and 45% (412,000) went to PS3, which is a logical correlation with the last set of released figures showing a gap of 5000 units between the no.2 and 3 consoles of this generation. Console sales naturally spiked last week with rises of 125% on 360 and 127% on PS3 – though solid figures have yet to be declared by NPD or retailers.

Naturally, this puts the console title at no.1 on both platforms and knocked Wii Fit into second place on the All formats chart. The question is the length of time that it will remain at the top.

Despite GTA IV's success, Marvel Entertainment must be happy that the game failed to affect their movie Iron Man, which grossed $201million, half in America and half overseas, in its opening weekend. Their own game had an above average opening to accompany it, so who says gamers won't leave their machines to go to the cinema, when the movie's good enough?

- Ken

Figures: BBC News and Gamesindustry.biz

0 comments