Grand Theft Auto IV Passes 22M Shipped, Franchise Above 114M
by Kyle Orland
At a recent presentation at ThinkEquity's annual Growth conference, which Gamasutra listened in on, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick revealed updated sales numbers for many of the publisher's key games and franchises, including over 22 million lifetime shipments for April 2008's Grand Theft Auto IV.
The new number represents an increase from the 20 million shipped units of GTAIV reported in March, and puts the latest title in the series on par with the 21.5 million shipments Take-Two reported for the PS2's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas through early 2008.
The Grand Theft Auto franchise as a whole has now shipped more than 114 million units since its debut in 1997, Zelnick said.
Take-Two also reported new lifetime unit shipment numbers for other recent titles and key franchises, including:
* Midnight Club franchise: 18.5 million
* NBA2K franchise: 17 million
* Red Dead Redemption: 12.5 million
* Civilization franchise: 11 million
* BioShock franchise: 9 million
* Carnival Games franchise: 8 million
* Max Payne franchise: 7.5 million
* Mafia franchise: 5 million
* Borderlands franchise: 4.5 million
* The Darkness: 1 million
Elsewhere in the talk, Zelnick outlined how downloadable content has been a key tool for limiting quick used sales of new titles, and a way to quickly build on existing games with content that meets market demands.
"Once we do the core development, which takes a long time and is pretty hard, doing the development related to the DLC in a high-quality way is a lot easier and a lot quicker," Zelnick said.
"At the time we put out Red Dead Redemption in May, we didn't even have a fantasy that we'd be putting out a zombie title [the Undead Nightmare DLC] for Halloween. But we [did], as it happens."
