Grand Theft Auto IV steals record for first-week sales: $500 million
No taint of ill repute could deter the worldwide rush for “Grand Theft Auto IV,” a notoriously violent video game that racked up a record $500 million in estimated retail sales globally in its first week.
Take-Two Interactive Software, the “Grand Theft Auto” publisher that’s under pressure from a takeover bid by Electronic Arts, said Wednesday that GTA IV sold approximately 6 million copies in the seven days since its April 29 release.
About 3.6 million copies were sold the first day, with a retail value of roughly $310 million for combined sales of the standard $60 game and a $90 collector’s edition, the company said. GTA IV is available for two consoles, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3.
The dollar figures were boosted by exchange rates that made the retail price significantly higher in Europe, where almost as many copies may have been sold as in the United States, according to analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities.
Still, the GTA results soared beyond the previously reported video-game and entertainment highs: $300 million in global first-week sales last year for Microsoft’s “Halo 3” game, and worldwide first-week movie box office totals of more than $400 million each last year for Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” and Sony’s “Spider-Man 3.”
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