As expected, the numbers for Grand Theft Auto IV are coming out real good! Market researchers NPD Group have come out with the data which indicates that some 2.85 million copies of GTA IV were sold on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 in the first five days of release.
As for the breakup, the Xbox 360 version of GTA IV shifted some 1.85 million copies while that of PS3 sold some million copies. $1.23 billion worth of gaming goods was sold last month across stores in the United States. But GTA IV was not the only game responsible for it. Games like Mario Kart Wii and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue for the PS3 also contributed along with gaming hardware and accessories .
Anita Frazier is an analyst with the NPD. She explains, “It’s unusual for three games to exceed the one-million mark in a nonholiday month, which just goes to prove that great content can succeed regardless of when it is launched. This is the first month in many that we have seen a decrease in portable hardware and software sales but it is important to remember that this year, the Easter holiday fell in March as compared to April in 2007.”
If you look at the hardware figures, the Nintendo consoles again dominated in April as the Wii sold some 714,000 units while the DS shifted some 415,000 consoles. As for the Sony consoles, the PS2, PS3 and the PSP sold 124,000, 187,000 and 193,000 units respectively. What about the Xbox 360, well, Microsoft would be content with 188,000 units of their next-gen consoles sold.