grand theft auto 4...Is a success or a failure???

[MontanaHatchet]

famousringo said:

I think this graph does a good job of illustrating it:

http://vgchartz.com/swlaunch.php?reg1=All&game1=Grand+Theft+Auto%3A+San+Andreas+-+PS2&reg2=All&game2=Grand+Theft+Auto+IV+-+PS3&reg3=All&game3=Grand+Theft+Auto+IV+-+X360&weeks=100

GTA IV on PS3 and X360 fall about 1 million short of where GTA:SA was on the PS2 at a similar point in its life. The charts look similar, except the two million units GTA:SA sold on Xbox are not shown here.

Yes, GTA IV is not quite living up to its predecessor in sales, but to me the bigger difference is that GTA:SA didn't cost $100 million to make. The series has peaked, and I don't expect investments in future GTAs to be nearly as large.

Why would you include the Xbox version? It launched much later, and if you want to include versions that launched later, you should probably include sales for the PC versions of both GTA4 and San Andreas (GTA4 hasn't launched on the PC yet, so your data wouldn't even be complete anyways). Plus, the PS360 userbase at the launch of GTA4 was 30 million, compared to about 70 million or so for the San Andreas launch. And who really cares if the budget was higher? Spiderman 3 has a ridiculous budget, but it was still a resounding success with great profits. GTA4 is likely to outdo GTA3, which was the first GTA game on the PS2 and launched with (I'm guessing) a similar userbase size. And of course the budget will be smaller. They'll be using similar engines/mechanics for the future HD GTA titles, and it will be cheaper.

As someone with a Zack & Wiki avatar, you shouldn't be so quick to call a game a flop. Legs determine everything.