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Parokki said:
I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed with the sales of GTA4. It's still an extremely noteworthy title, and might even boost hardware sales of the HD consoles above the Wii for a week or two, but permanently turning sales trends, or achieving the kinds of numbers the previous parts did?

This might be just my personal nutpot theory, but I don't think a majority of the people who bought the previous parts have a current gen console yet. The PS2 sold well to the masses of people who hadn't cared about games before the Playstations, but for some unexplainable reason Sony priced their new console over what that crowd is paying, and the only one really going after them now is Nintendo.

The biggest reason the previous parts did so damn well is that they were accessible to everyone, on a console everyone had. Shooting aliens? Fun for us gamers, but most people are turned off by the idea. Leading armies across the globe? Hacking apart half of the Greek mythology? Saving Hyrule? Clearly millions of people are interested in all that, but look what happens when someone makes a game where you play a criminal in a large city, and can do whatever you want. Unbeliveable mass appeal.

Games like Gran Turismo and Grand Theft Auto profited the most of the PS2's insanely wide appeal, and will see the biggest hits from alienating the casual audience. GTA4 will definitely be a 4M+ seller both consoles combined, but 10M or 15M is on par with most John Lucas stuff. I expect it to launch slower than Halo 3, but have much better legs, and possibly overtake it in a year or so.

I second this argument, plus what reverie said "the PS2 sold GTA more than the other way around. We will see blips of a few 100k for each console in the week of release of GTA. GTA Sales on 360 will be more front-loaded and sales on PS3 will have longer legs."