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Grand Theft Auto IV bigger than - Harry Potter?
Yes, the latest iteration of Grand Theft Auto is sexy/violent and, yes, it’s beating previous best-selling videogames Halo 3 and Guitar Hero III in sales.
When you combine the estimated 6 million copies of GTA IV already sold with the price of each game, however, you get some truly eye-opening numbers. Take Two Interactive, which owns GTA IV developer Rockstar Games, has announced single-day game sales figures of $310 million and a first-week tally of $500 million.
$500 million - that’s more than the domestic box office of any film but Titanic, whose $600 million still leads the pack. Star Wars? $461 million. Shrek 2? $437 million.
And there’s more, Niko: The $310 in estimated single-day sales beats the last mega-sales phenomenon, last July’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which grossed a then-eye-popping $220 million in one day.
(Here’s the grain of salt: Divide the $310 million by its $50 price tag and you get about 6 million games sold; divide $220 million by its price of approximately $20, you get 11 million books sold. Divide Titanic’s $600 million by about $6 - a rough approximation of what movie tickets cost in 1997 - and you get 100 million movie tickets sold, albeit not in one day. Still, $310 million is a considerable chunk of change and drives corporate decisions far more than public opinion.)
It’s been easy for non-gamers to bash GTA IV as the latest bane to Civilization As We Know It, but the sheer scale of these sales figures suggests maybe it’s just a hugely popular, leisure-time-sucking videogame with mature content …
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