Your forecast for U.S. sales of Grand Theft Auto IV is sunny with a chance of massive ownage, if initial UK results are any indication — MCV is reporting that in the United Kingdom, the game sold 609,000 copies on day one, breaking sales records along the way.
Selling 501,000 copies exactly 3 and a half years earlier, GTA: San Andreas held the previous day-one record across platforms; but GTA IV squashed its predecessor by over 100,000 copies. On Xbox 360, GTA IV’s 355,000 copies knocked out Halo 3, which sold 266,000 day-one units last September… And on PS3, the remaining 274,000 easily surpassed last month’s Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, which had only 80,000.
MCV notes that sales are favoring the Xbox 360 thus far, but by only 10 percent.
In an interview with the Times of London (via Joystiq) Rockstar North producer Leslie Benzies estimates that GTA IV cost an astounding $100 million to make; but at the current exchange rate times that many copies sold — not counting the retailers’ cut — UK day-one sales alone bring them halfway there.
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