As expected, Microsoft continued to tout the fact that the Xbox 360 has surpassed 10 million units sold in the United States. Since they first made the announcement a few days ago, they’ve bumped that figure up to 10.1 million sold.
Surprisingly little from the press release Microsoft sent out had to do with figures that would stem from the 360 having been on the market for a year longer than the competition. That could be because they dedicated an entire portion of it to talking about how wonderful Grand Theft Auto IV has been performing on the 360. They even say it’s “outselling the other platform’s version by nearly 2:1 in the U.S.” — “other platform”? What’s up with that?
As it turns out, GameStop’s claim that 64% of all copies of GTA IV sold were on Xbox 360 was spot on — 64.9% is the exact number if you do the math with NPD’s numbers for the month of April. Between the 360 and PS3 versions of the game, GTA IV managed to sell 2.85 million even though it was released on April 29 — not too shabby.
Mario Kart Wii, meanwhile, sold more than a million copies. That’s a million plastic wheels out there in the wild, imparing people’s ability to control the game properly. And of course, with the number of Wii systems that sold in April, you know you’re going to see a lot of Wii Play sales, and that we did. Smash Bros. had a big drop off, from 2.7 million in March down to 326k in April. Not that Nintendo should be complaining, with five of their games in the top ten, with six of the top ten on Nintendo platforms.
April 2008 Software Sales
GTA IV (360) - 1.85M Mario Kart Wii w/ wheel (Wii) - 1.12M GTA IV (PS3) - 1.00M Wii Play (Wii) - 360,000 Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) - 326,000 Gran Turismo 5: Prologue (PS3) - 224,000 Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness (DS) - 202,000 Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time (DS) - 202,000 Guitar Hero III (Wii) - 152,000 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360) - 141,000
Call of Duty 4 on 360 continues to do its best Mustafa impression, as it just refuses to be kicked out of the top ten. Could next month finally see it kicked out? I’m going to go ahead and predict a bold “no.”
According to at least one business news source the CBS buyout of CNet is part of growing trend involving companies trying to reach gamers. It’s all about demographics.
In the case of CBS-Cnet, the so-called synergies lie in core demographics. By the very nature of Cnet’s tech focus, its audience features the increasingly hard-to-reach 18-to-34-year-old men who prefer ”Grand Theft Auto IV” and ”Indiana Jones” to TV viewing — unless there’s a ball game on, of course.
The article mentions the recent Blockbuster offer to Circuit City and Microsoft’s attempted hostile take over Yahoo! as well. The common theme is the growing influence of gamers on the economic market. Yes gamers we shall rule the world! It’s only a matter of time.
Sony has announced that a new firmware update has been released for PlayStation 3, which will bring the current version up to 2.35. If there are any features being added, Sony’s not saying, as PlayStation.Blog brings word that it’s a “minor update to improve stability of some PS3 titles.” Grand Theft Auto IV, perhaps?
Check back later today for an update on what’s been added to the PlayStation Store.
One of the dramatic differences between casual games and something like GTA is the amount of money spent on development. While reports put GTA IV’s budget at around $100 million, PopCap Games is making news for a new game costing over $1 million. This could quite possibly be a record in the casual industry, PopCap co-founder John Vechey revealed to CasualGaming.biz.
The reason for the large budget is mainly due to troubles in the game’s development cycle. Vechey explained, “It’s been in production for some time – we took a few wrong turns with the product and turned back to go in different directions. It’s really tough to get the simple gameplay out there, but we’re there.”
He wouldn’t actually reveal anything about the game; the name, its platform, or anything else. We do know it should be out this year, but that’s it.
“I actually think in comparison to the hardcore games space there is a lot more prototyping and a lot more iteration in that beginning part when it comes to core gameplay. That’s kind of sad – because I often wish that in the core games space those developers had time to do a little bit more iteration on their games at the start.
“We spend more time than anyone else in the casual games space on those things, sometimes over two years, and that tends to mean they cost over $500,000. In the core games space very few people are able to take that risk, except for rare cases like Valve or Blizzard.”
In the meantime, I’d like Peggle Nights to hold me over — I’ve already spent way, way too much time playing Deluxe and Extreme.
Okay, so if GameStop is any indication of how the rest of the retailers in the U.S. sold Grand Theft Auto IV, Microsoft saw its system cash in on 64% of sales for Rockstar’s game, while Sony only got 36% of the love in the game’s first week. But, as the numbers show, the PlayStation 3 actually had the better performance when you compare the number of systems that have been sold. (Thanks to Level Up for doing all the math so I didn’t have to.)
After reaching out to both Microsoft and Sony, Level Up got two very different takes, as you’d expect.
Microft’s Aaron Greenberg (the same one that ripped the PS3 recently) had this to say:
I think many people have been surprised to see how well GTA IV is selling on Xbox 360 given the history of the franchise. These sales results add GTA IV to a long list of franchises that have switched over from Playstation to find a new home on Xbox 360 similar to what happened last year with titles like Madden and Guitar Hero. As you have covered on Level Up in the past, the majority of third party franchises are being developed first on our platform so they end up playing best on Xbox 360 and when you combine that with Xbox Live, we expect this trend to continue as more multiplatform releases hit the market. With that said, it is fantastic to hear that we beat PS3 two to one on Grand Theft Auto sales from a major retailer like GameStop.
Sony marketing VP Peter Dille offered this take:
GameStop probably does a little bit better with the early adopter crowd. There’s a larger installed base right now on Xbox 360 than on PS3. So it’s not surprising that there’s going to be more selling on Xbox 360 than PS3. Having said that, we’re really excited about the ratio. If I had an installed base advantage of 3-1, I wouldn’t be crowing too much about a 60-40 sales advantage. We think it’s not as high as what GameStop’s telling you, if you look at [the full picture on] the national level. They’re outselling us, but not by that same margin, and it’s because of their installed base lead. With an installed base lead that’s close to 3-1, if you’re bragging about a 60-40 software split, it’s clear evidence that the Playstation 3 consumer is overindexing on GTA IV, and the Playstation brand loyalty that we’ve been talking about is bearing itself out in the marketplace as we speak.
Dille’s right, as the numbers proved, but does anyone else find it funny that for once Sony is actually using its smaller install base as an argument in their favor?
Microsoft went pretty number-crazy after Grand Theft Auto IV was released, claiming that 40% of new consoles sold with a copy of GTA, sales of the 360 increased 54% over the week prior to GTA’s release and, most notably, that about 60% of all copies of GTA sold in the US were the 360 version. We now have another source to back up that claim — GameStop, which says that 64% of all copies sold were for the 360, compared with 36% on PlayStation 3, in the game’s first week of availability.
There’s no doubt that this has to do with the larger install base of the 360 here in the US. But how exactly did the game perform compared with the relative install bases? As of March, the NPD group reports that 9.9 million Xbox 360 systems and 4.1 million PlayStation 3 systems had been sold. Now, without including the number of systems sold in April (which shouldn’t have too drastic an impact on these numbers, anyway), the 360 holds 70.7% of the total 360 and PS3 systems sold to the PS3’s 29.3%. So with 64% of the copies of GTA being sold on 360, Microsoft’s box actually underperformed compared with PlayStation 3.
You can see how the two companies will go about spinning sales of the game, but at least we can begin to see the reality of this matter.
Above you’ll see an SNL Weekend Update segment mocking the biggest videogame release of the year, GTA IV. Niko and Vlad from the game come on to defend the criticisms of Liberty City, but apparently just show off GTA’s poor animations.(?) While I didn’t find that part of it all that funny (and it was clearly the focal point), the idea that they tried to pull off jokes about something so subtle on a mainstream TV show speaks volumes about the success of the game. I never thought anything of the animation in the game; I’m not sure if they were exaggerating or if I’m just used to imperfect videogame animation.
The whole, “I will beat you!” was kinda funny, at least. I think the SNL Digital Shorts guys would be better suited for a GTA skit, though. For now, the Chappelle’s Show GTA skit remains the king of GTA parodies.
Welcome to the latest edition of Pachter Predicts, where Wedbush Morgan analyst and my sworn adversary Michael Pachter makes his predictions for the past month’s console sales here in the United States. For the second straight month, Pachter has predicted that the PlayStation 3 outsold the Xbox 360. (Although last month his prediction turned out wrong, as the 360 had a 5,000 unit edge over the PS3.)
Here are his predictions, with last month’s numbers in parentheses:
If Pachter turns out to be right, it looks like the 360 and PS3 won’t have seen a major boost in sales as many have thought they would. He attributes his predicted higher sales of the DS and Wii to their greater availability.
As for Grand Theft Auto IV, he expects it to have sold 3.3 million units in its first six days in the US alone, and also notes that he expects 20 games to have cracked the 100,000 unit mark in April, compared with only nine last year.
Those of you who still find yourself looking for a Wii, Pachter thinks that situation might be soon resolving itself: “We believe that Nintendo has diverted a significant portion of its available supply to Europe since April 2007, as the weakening dollar has made US sales less profitable for the company… We expect the supply situation will begin to improve over the next several months. We expect a surge in supply in the US for Wii Fit’s May 21 launch here, and believe we could see as many as 900,000 Wii units show up at retail this month (May).”
Aside from World of Warcraft, the biggest MMO of 2007 and so far this year isn’t one you would name off the top of your head. According to the author of an article up on Eurogamer; it’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The piece goes on to defend the position that although CoD4 isn’t an MMO in the strictest sense of the definition, it does share many of the same gameplay elements that typify an MMO.
Call of Duty 4 proves that it’s possible to take some of the things that MMOs do right and distil them for a game that wouldn’t traditionally be seen as an MMO. The potency of the idea, even in this form, is obvious; the drive to play just a little bit more, because there’s a reward waiting just up ahead, is an incredibly powerful and addictive force for players
I can actually agree with the author on most of his points, and the idea isn’t one that hasn’t been presented before. The success of MMOs is changing the way traditional video games are being designed. One of the latest examples of this trend is the multi-player mode in RockStar’s Grand Theft Auto IV. I think we’re going to see the games industry moving ever closer to this formula as gamers demand more of a social element to their gaming experience.
For the most part, executives from Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo don’t usually have too harsh of words for one another; they’ll talk up their respective consoles quite a bit, but that’s usually the extent of it. But that’s not always the case, as we learned from a new Destructoid interview with Aaron Greenberg, the director of product management for Xbox 360 and Live.
The interview focused on the success of Grand Theft Auto IV, and while Greenberg took a veiled shot at Sony for the problems that have been reported with the online play on PS3, he didn’t say much until he was asked about the PS3’s 2008 prospects. Destructoid asked if Greenberg thought that the 360 had enough to fend off the PS3 and its growing momentum with MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, and Home.
[D]idn’t Sony promise all of this last year including Home as well? We have been fighting Sony’s promises from the day we entered the market and if you remember at that time it was all about PS2 being an online cybercity with partner announcements from the likes of RealNetworks and AOL. Then three years ago at E3 they showed what PS3 games would supposedly look like with the Killzone 2 video, that we are now learning will ship four years later. That means that we will have shipped Gears of War and Gears of War 2 before they can even get Killzone out the door. Think back to GDC 2007 when Sony promised to leap ahead in online with the Sony Home unveil. Here we are two years later and multiple delays for a product that has appears to have little to no buzz. Where are the achievements? The friends list integration across all games? Where is the long-promised video store? Where are all the other products using and networking with their CELL chip? How come Blu-ray did not result in better games? What happened with Sixaxis and rumble? Where is the complete 1080p game library we were promised? If Blu-ray as they said would be such a catalyst to PS3 console sales, then why have PS3 sales over the past couple months not seen any lift since the format victory?
There are indeed inaccuracies in there; it’s only been a little over a year since Home was unveiled, and the PS3 has outsold the 360 most months this year, even in the US. He does raise some good points as well, but I mean, jeeze — do you really peg this as something you’d hear an executive say publicly?
No, I’m not ready to let go of Grand Theft Auto going-ons yet.
MTV Multiplayer compiled a list of eight glaring inaccuracies between GTA IV’s Liberty City and the real world New York City. As someone who is close but doesn’t frequent NYC, I really wouldn’t have had these things occur to me in the course of playing the game.
We are not a car town: No sensible New Yorker uses a car as their primary means of transportation in the city, unless — maybe — they commute from the suburbs. Car ownership doesn’t make much sense. There are never any parking spots. Parking garages are prohibitively expensive. And, most importantly, the subway is a faster, cheaper and more efficient means of transportation. We don’t drive here. Niko, to be a real New Yorker, should rely on the subway. But what would he be left to grandly thieve?
We have lots of two-story tour buses:GTA IV includes sports cars, sedans, taxis, limos, garbage trucks, police cruisers, buses, motorcycles and more. But where are the red double-decker tour buses? This a drastic oversight. Every major thoroughfare in Manhattan has a roofless double-decker bus from Big Apple Tours or some other company. These buses are used to show visitors the sights. A guide stands on the top level with a mic in hand, pointing stuff out. Hey, Rockstar, if there was one signature New York City vehicle I wanted to commandeer right off a short pier in Liberty City, this was it. You let me down.
We eat bagels: Have I missed something or is it not possible to eat a bagel in Grand Theft Auto IV’s Liberty City? Niko can eat burgers, hot dogs and go to diners. But bagels? The most famous New York City food? Never fear, visitors to our town, we have bagels that can be eaten and enjoyed, whether Liberty City acknowledges it or not. Burgers? Waste of time. You can eat them in any town.
Okay, he’s nitpicking, but it’s still fun to find out where Liberty City falls short of being a true virtual representation of NYC.
Both Microsoft and Game|Life have each compiled interesting lists focused on numbers surrounding the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. So if either numbers or GTA isn’t your thing, you should probably just move on.
According to Microsoft’s US team:
Actual MS sales data from last week shows Xbox 360 console sales at retail went up 54% week-over-week as a result of GTA’s success
According to retailers more than 60% of all GTA games sold in the first week were the Xbox 360 version
Retailers are telling us that the game is attaching strongly to new console sales, with roughly 40% of new consoles selling with a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV
As for Xbox Live:
In the first week, more than 2.3 million people played Grand Theft Auto IV on Xbox Live
GTA IV is now the number one played game on Xbox Live
Over the weekend, we saw the Xbox Live service reach 1 million concurrent users
Gamers have unlocked more than 12 million achievements worth over 100 million gamerscore points in GTA
Grand Theft Auto IV set a new record for time played, with the average gamer spending more than four hours playing the game on Live in the first week alone
And some of the random facts Game|Life has compiled:
Damages sought by Take-Two after GTA IV ads were pulled from Chicago buses: $300,000
Steps included in official fix for PlayStation 3 issues: 12
Current Metacritic rating: 99
Restraining orders filed against the game: 1
The numbers don’t really lie, so it’s fun to take a look at them and try to crunch some of these numbers. And to think, the game’s only been out for a little over a week.
Rockstar has the new Grand Theft Auto IV patch 1.0.1 up. There’s no official patch notes to go by at this time. However, word out is that it will most effect multiplayer. Some gamers are happy to now be able to get online with their PS3. However, there still some complaints with type 2 freeze. It seems there are a lot of mixed results being reported, but really if you want to play online with your PS3, you have no choice but to patch.
Take-Two said today that Grand Theft Auto IV has surpassed all-time entertainment records for day one and week one sales by dollar value. Released just a week and one day ago,GTA IV has sold approximately 6 million units globally with an estimated retail value of more than $500 million in the first week. The game sold approximately 3.6 million units on its opening day with a retail value of approximately $310 million globally.Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick sounds practically beaming when he states the following:
“We knew Grand Theft Auto IV would break new ground in terms of the player’s experience, with its compelling story line, extraordinary gameplay and action that ranges over a broad urban canvas. Now, it has broken sales and rating records as well. Grand Theft Auto IV’s first week performance represents the largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment, and we believe these retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date. We congratulate the entire Rockstar team on creating a must-have experience that takes the legendary Grand Theft Auto franchise to a new level.”
Ben Feder, Take-Two’s Executive Officer went on to say:
“Rockstar’s goal is to make each new title in the Grand Theft Auto franchise even better than those that preceded it, and Grand Theft Auto IV is a smashing success on that score. Grand Theft Auto IV makes full use of the power of next generation technology, and offers players an experience unique in the interactive entertainment medium. This game sets a new standard in the industry, with critics hailing it as both an artistic and technological masterpiece.”
We all knew it would sell well, so this news just basically stated the obvious, but $500 million dollars is pretty darn awesome nonetheless. Plus, thanks to this wonderful bit of cash, stock in Take-Two was up $0.29 (cents) to $26.35 as of Tuesday.
We know that Electronic Arts was likely trying to take advantage of the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV with the timing of its acquisition attempts. We know that Take-Two was holding off so that they could take advantage of the higher stock values that would undoubtedly come when GTA IV launched. Now that Take-Two’s stock has risen to $26.63, which is slightly higher than the $26 offer EA had made, Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said in a statement that the increase “vindicates our strategy of waiting until the launch with regard to EA’s offer.”
On the other hand, EA’s Jeff Brown doesn’t believe the change is unexpected and doesn’t really make a difference in his company’s offer to acquire Take-Two. He explained, “We’ve seen a share price above and below our offer and it doesn’t change anything. All of that was factored into our offer of $2 billion.”
A New York Times story infers the two different effects that the increase could have on negotiations between the two companies. Both of them seem quite realistic, so it’s difficult to make an accurate prediction about which way things will turn out.
On one hand, the relatively modest increase in Take-Two’s shares could prompt Electronic Arts and Take-Two to act quickly. Take-Two would theoretically do so because it’s not sure how much more it can expect shares to rise in the short term, and would do so because Electronic Arts can justify to its own shareholders a price increase, given that its current offer is below market.
On the other hand, the increase in Take-Two’s stock could serve to greatly prolong talk of an acquisition. Take-Two might feel the market is just beginning to validate its business and that the stock is only just starting to rise. But Electronic Arts could be intent on sticking with its price and feel that the longer it waits, the more the enthusiasm spawned by GTA IV’s introduction will wear off.
I remain hopeful that Take-Two withstands EA’s attempts, if only to save the NBA 2K series. EA murdered my favorite football franchise, and I’m not going to be pleased if they do the same to my favorite basketball franchise.
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that achievements would be a big hit in the 360 version of Grand Theft Auto IV; to me, it’s even one of the selling points right behind the exclusive DLC. But it’s interesting to now try and wrap your head around a figure that Major Nelson revealed in his most recent podcast — in just 24 hours, two million achievements worth 15 million Gamerpoints were unlocked in Grand Theft Auto IV alone.
Wow.
Major Nelson has promised more numbers like this in the future, which would be much more interesting to look at if he would also reveal the numbers behind some other big games like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 so that we can compare. Even without it, it’s incredible to think that little pop-up came up two million times because of a single game in a single day. Incredible.via 1UP / image via Media Inside
While I plan on writing a long feature to disagree with Ron’s assessment that GTA IV isn’t the type of game that deserves a 10/10 score, I’ve yet to see anyone criticize the game’s soundtrack. And how could they? With 214 songs and some brilliant writing, it’s perhaps the most flawless aspect of the game. MTV’s Stephen Totilo seems to agree, and he recently spoke with Rockstar’s Ivan Pavlovich, who was in charge of the game’s soundtrack.
Pavlovich explained the difficulties with licensing hip-hop music – there are so many people involved, which make the songs much more difficult to get the rights to. Just check out the last few pages of the game’s manual for an idea of the hurdles involved with assembling the game’s soundtrack.
Design breakthroughs presented some new opportunities. “This is the first GTA where you can actually find out what song you’re listening to while you’re playing the game,” Pavlovich explained, noting that all a player needs to do is send a text message from GTA IV protagonist Niko Bellic’s in-game cell phone to get a text back with the info. A Rockstar-run Web site called the Rockstar Social Club can even track players’ favorite songs and direct them to a custom Amazon.com playlist where they can buy the music. (The developers had considered letting Niko go to an in-game music store but scrapped that.) Also new: The songs in the soundtrack don’t always play in a set order anymore. Many of the stations randomize the playing order. There are even multiple DJ intros to songs, just to mix things up.
One thing Pavlovich wasn’t aware of was the exact design decision that ruled out an in-game MP3 player. It’s really too bad, as it would’ve been great to listen to the radio even on foot, but it’s not like it’s all that difficult to jack a vehicle.
In another case of news that makes up fanboys’ dreams, we’ve got another case of missing Ps. This time it’s Grand Theft Auto IV on PlayStation 3, which has been discovered to run at only 630p – well short of the 720p you find in the 360 version.
You can find a fairly simple explanation of what that means on Kotaku, but anyone who’s played the game or checked out GameVideos’ side-by-side comparison of the game knows that the game looks great on both consoles. There’s a slight difference with the color palettes in the two versions, and the slightly warmer colors in the PS3 version might just be a result of Rockstar using the processing power on something other than displaying those extra 90 lines.
Ultimately, while fanboys might bicker and argue about which technical detail makes for the superior version, the rest of us can go on with enjoying a terrific game.
An annoyed female has thrown down on men and the lengths they go to get and play video games. Apparently the release of Grand Theft Auto IV has La’Juanda Knight up in arms with “grown ass men” indulging in this particular form of entertainment. I had to share this with all of you men out there, because I find it sad, offensive and hilarious all at the same time.
It seems that her main problem with video games is that men choose games over time spent doing something else. Her diatribe includes waiting in long lines, scheduling time to play, taking days off work to play and ignoring family members during game time. She’s infuriated with coming home to a gathering of guys watching someone play a game and is absolutely incensed with being asked to spend time with “her man ” (gotta love the possessive nature of that statement) watching him play. She also complains about men staying up late playing instead of doing something “constructive.” Like what? Drinking, scoring drugs, trolling for hookers or stepping out with a mistress? I can think of many past times that are worse than video games.
One of the dramatic differences between casual games and something like GTA is the amount of money spent on development. While reports put GTA IV’s budget at around $100 million, PopCap Games is making news for a new game costing over $1 million. This could quite possibly be a record in the casual industry, PopCap co-founder John Vechey revealed to 
Welcome to the latest edition of Pachter Predicts, where Wedbush Morgan analyst and my sworn adversary Michael Pachter makes his predictions for the past month’s console sales here in the United States. For the 
For the most part, executives from Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo don’t usually have too harsh of words for one another; they’ll talk up their respective consoles quite a bit, but that’s usually the extent of it. But that’s not always the case, as we learned from a new 
Rockstar has the new Grand Theft Auto IV patch 1.0.1 up. There’s no official patch notes to go by at this time. However, word out is that it will most effect multiplayer. Some gamers are happy to now be able to get online with their PS3. However, there still some complaints with type 2 freeze. It seems there are a lot of mixed results being reported, but really if you want to play online with your PS3, you have no choice but to patch.
