Last year's top selling game title, Halo 3, holds the record for first-week sales, at nearly $300 million. All indications lead us to believe that the record will soon be broken starting at midnight tonight when Grand Theft Auto IV hits stores shelves. Expect long lines outside gaming retailers like EB World and Gamestop. Along with the Wii Fit from Nintendo (which won't be released until May 21...more on that later), GTA IV is already the top pre-ordered title on Amazon. GTA IV will be released for the category leading Xbox 360 console, which 17% of teens and college students own and Sony PlayStation 3, owned by 5% of teens and college students. There is little crossover console ownership. Only 14% of Xbox 360 owners also own a PS3. Much like the buzz and anticipation leading up to last year's release of Halo 3, the buzz surrounding GTA IV has been nothing short of non-stop since early February. Here's the killer stat: more than half of Xbox 360 or PS3 owners, which representative of some 1.6 million teens and college students plan on purchasing GTA IV and nearly a third of them, about half of million say they plan on purchasing it the week its released. Just doing some quick math, it works out to $100 million in sales for GTA IV, and of course that does not take into account the hard game charging twentysomething demo. Video game tracker NPD Group releases its April game title sales data on May 15, expect to see GTA IV take the crown from Halo 3 as the most successful release of all time.
GTA is a top selling game but I'm not surprised that half of PS3/xbox360 owners plan to purchase it. Those players tend to buy more mature games.
Posted by: Sudoku Print Puzzles | January 04, 2010 at 09:58 AM