Grand Theft Auto Steals UK Chart Victory

As revealed yesterday by Gamasutra, Grand Theft Auto IV sold a total of 926,000 units in the five days from Tuesday March 29th - generating £39.9 million ($78.7m) in revenues. In fact, 61.2 percent of the value of all game software sold during the week was for GTA IV – a total bigger than the total software market figure of every other week so far this year, apart from week one. With most new games in the UK released on a Friday, direct comparisons of first week sales are somewhat unhelpful, but the game’s confirmed first day sales now stand at 631,000. This compares to a previous best in the UK of 501,000 units for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on the PlayStation 2. The 2004 title still holds the individual format day one and week one (677,000 units) records. The day one total for Grand Theft Auto IV on Xbox 360 was a record 349,000 units (£15.0 million/$29.6m), with the week one total of 514,000 units (£22.0 million/$43.4m) also a record for the format. Figures for the PlayStation 3 version were also both new records with day one sales of 282,000 units (£12.3 million/$24.3m) and a week one total of 413,000 units (£17.9 million/$35.3m). Ultimately, sales were split almost evenly between the two formats, with the Xbox 360 version taking 55 percent of the market and the PlayStation 3 a total of 45 percent. The effect on console hardware sales was also similar, with Xbox 360 sales rising 125 percent and the PlayStation 3 by 127 percent. As usual, Chart-Track does not provide specific unit figures for public consumption. In less than a week Grand Theft Auto IV has sold more units than every other title in 2007, apart from Electronic Arts’ FIFA 08, Nintendo’s Brain Training (aka Brain Age) and Activision’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Low stock meant that Wii Fit was able to put up little resistance at number three, with sales down 58 percent on its first week. Even so, combined sales of Grand Theft Auto IV still outsold it by a factor of nine to one. With no publisher willingly releasing a new title during Grand Theft Auto IV’s debut week, the only new entry is Sega movie tie-in Iron Man, with the Xbox 360 version appearing at number twenty-nine in the charts. Accompanying the increased hardware sales, a number of older Xbox 360 titles have also returned to the top forty. Forza Motorsport 2 re-enters the chart at number twenty-one, Viva Piñata reappears at number thirty-two and Project Gotham Racing 4 at number thirty-four. Halo 3 also moves up seven places to number nineteen. Overall in the top forty there were thirteen Wii titles, twelve for the Nintendo DS, eight for the Xbox 360, four for the PlayStation 3 and one each for the PlayStation 2, PC and PSP.

Leisure software charts compiled by Chart Track, (C)2008. ELSPA Ltd