April 28, 2008
The Associated Press reports that Tuesday's GTA IV launch will be the biggest video game release of all time, easily topping the $300 million in first-week sales generated by Halo 3 in 2007.The AP quotes Wedbush-Morgan financial analyst Michael Pachter:
The addressable market at launch is about 24 million consoles. So how many will sell in the first week or month or few months? Nine million. That’s the number. That’s about a 35 percent attach rate. By year’s end, it’ll be somewhere between 11 and 13 million because more consoles will be sold before the holidays.
Bloomberg offers a similar prediction, as well as an estimate from Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey that GTA IV will hit the $360 million mark during its first week at retail. Hickey summed it up for Bloomberg:
People are going to buy this game.
Comments
Aye, Halo 3 did the Flood justice, though I hate the shapeshifter Flood with the fury of a thousand suns! At least they react well to fire. >: D
I suppose another thing that added to the Flood's disturbing qualities is the real-time transformations from normal to Flood. Half-Life's headcrabs were similar in function and end-result, but at least with them, the poor victim's face was hidden.
If you have time to kill, (trying to avoid spoilers) go to the level with the light rings, where the massive Covenant vs. Flood fight is taking place. Find a former Elite that is now a flood form, and stand behind him. Be sure to study his shoulders and back carefully.
Anyways, I would rank the Flood above anything in GTA for disturbing factor. After all, from a purely philosophical standpoint, I'd rather be run over for the $20 in my pocket instead of having a Floodspore latch onto my head and NOMNOMNOM. Of course, I tend to have a rather vivid (and visceral) imagination concerning sci-fi. Call it a pitfall of one of my non-gaming hobbies.
I wonder how many PS3 owners out there do not own 360s as well. I wonder if the PS3 market really offers more than 50% of consoles sold. My guess, once again anecdotal, is that many potential buyers of the PS3 version will be buying it for their xbox instead because they want to play it with their friends on LIVE.
I have to wonder just because I've never seen anyone that is an exclusive PS3 console owner.
Not that it matters, but I've played Halo 3. To it's credit, almost everything it did, it did very well. Easy and multi-functional controls that do different things in different contexts cuts down on cluttered button combinations to do simple tasks, and smearing several people in a warthog is as fun as ever.
However, it just doesn't do anything really new. It polishes everything it already does, but it doesn't really bring anything new. Sure, forge is spiffy, and saving the instant replay where you stickied your buddy as he was flying by on the man cannon is hilarious, but they don't contribute anything to the core gameplay.
Halo 3 also gave birth to Grifball, which is the best sport ever.
Anyways, as I asked above, please keep things civil. Acting snide is just adding fuel to the fire.
@Dark Sovereign
I scared the crap out of my friends when we did the floodship level through XBL. I had snagged the flamethrower and took the lead. When the Flood approached, I had said in my best psycho voice, "Buuurrrrnnnnnn...BURN FOR MEEE!!" I had forgotten that everything I said was going through the mic, and my friends had a very nervous laugh at my expense.
-- Back on topic --
The only way we'll know for sure is by simply waiting for the numbers tomorrow night. I wonder how many people are getting the bundle packages that come with a console and GTAIV. I've already got a 360 and PS3 thanks to my well-paying job (go to college, kids!), so I'll just be getting the game by itself.
I agree completely. Halo 3 may not have been revolutionary, and it may have been incredibly hyped, but at the very least it was polished far beyond what most devs seem to be capable of. As a major FPS fan (console and PC both-originally PC in fact) I quite enjoy it. What originally drew me to the series was the co-op play, but I also enjoy the multi- and single- player modes. Just because it has its fanboys and a lot of marketing doesn't mean it's bad.
As for the original topic: Sales figures have little to do with whether or not either game is any good. GTA as a series has a larger fanbase than Halo, and a significant number of them may not yet have a current-gen console. I'd be interested to see how console sales change (both PS3 and 360) at release. As for who the audience is, I'm not really sure what the age group shakedown is, but if you look at sales records for previous GTA games and the three Halo games (not sure where to find those exactly) I would say that is the most relevant factor here.
I was exclusively PS3 for a long while until after the 360 Elites came out, and I had bought the 360 mainly for Bioshock and Mass Effect. Halo 3 rolled along, as well as Ace Combat 6, though I only play with two or three friends I know.
I'm getting the 360 GTAIV for the DLC, since I'm a sucker for added content, but if there were no DLC, or the content were equally shared, I would get the PS3 version. About every twenty minutes, my 360 sounds like a badly maintained 747 trying to take off, but a turkey gets sucked into one of the engines, and the framerate tanks. After about a minute of that horrible junk, it calms down and goes back to normal.
I had that same problem. It's died down now though. Maybe it's that new chip?
I've heard of a number of people who gave up on the 360 and got a ps3 (unfortunatly some people suffered from RROD multiple times), I don't know too many that has both... mostly just one or the other. Common opinion there is that its too damn expensive to get both systems... most of the poeple i know that have a second next-gen console got themselves a wii in addition to their PS3/360... the wii is more affordable than either of those consoles and makes it even harder to buy the third console. I think this is part of lead to so much talk of console wars; the last generation it was easier for people to get more than one or all 3 systems but this generation a lot of gamers feel like they need to choose... Combine that with fanboyish nature and you get console wars; a bunch of fanboys who are really just trying to justify their "Choice" of gaming console
@BrandonL337
I don't know, sounds to me like it's less "Halo hate" and more like "Meh, Halo is overrated"... it was great for a while but i got bored with it months ago (a few new things but it was mostly just more of the same) and i don't know that many people who still play it as much as they used to (and i noticed that before smash bros came out and started being the game of the month)... really, the fanboys can be quite annoying; really, they are so quick to make the claim that Halo3 is better despite the fact that they have yet to play GTAIV... and now they act like the article is claiming GTAIV is better, when all it is stating the unbiased analyses have how the sales figures will work out. Really, they're are a lot of better games out there.
I get what your saying, even so a lot of games get boring after a while even with multiplayer the only games that I played that didn't do this were: GH3, Crackdown, and Dead Rising (altough to be fair I only recently started playing that again after getting the Real bad ending and now my tv burst a bulb or something and now I can't see when it turns night /cries)
and for my brother it's Oblivion and he's put 90+hours into like all 5 of his saves, it scares me
What in the hell have you been doing to your 360 and how on earth did you manage to get a turkey inside of it.
Of course, the rating of each game might make a difference. We'll have to see.