'Grand Theft Auto IV' Makes $500 Million in One Week
Friday, May 9, 2008 at 2:36PM How does half a billion in sales in one week sound to you?
Take-Two Software - a company we just mentioned in reference to an upcoming movie adaptation of Bioshock - claims they sold six million units of the fourth installment of Grand Theft Auto in the first week, 3.6 million of them on the first day the game was available (that comes out to $310 million). In fact, the first day sales for GTA IV would've set the one day record without the help of any other days of the week; Halo held the previous record, with $300 million in its first week.
The very busy Strauss Zelnick says, "We believe these
retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date. This signals just how important interactive entertainment has become in
entertainment writ large."
Now, if you look at it unit by unit, Zelnick is completely wrong. Six million
units in a week is nothing. The last Harry Potter sold 8.3 million in a day last
July, and movie ticket sales for last year's Spider-Man 3 were close to 40
million worldwide on opening weekend.
But you can't look at it unit by unit. GTA IV costs $60 versus $35 for the Potter book and $7 - $10 for a movie ticket, on average. Of course, if Spider-Man 3 cost $60 a pop, it might still have made $381 million in three days, but it would not have sold 40 million tickets. Conversely, if GTA IV cost $10...well, who knows how many it would have sold? You'd have to think at least double if not triple the amount that purchased the game in the first week.
So when we talk about summer blockbusters from now on, I think we might have a new sheriff in town.
Reader Comments (1)
Must also take into account the user base. Everyone can see a movie, not everyone has a video game system that can play GTA. The real question is for the numbers they sold, what percentage of PS3 and 360 owners had to buy it.