Of course it's relevant.

I was thinking about typing up a Is the Smash Bros. series still relevant? thread in response to this, but realized what an enormous waste of time it would be. Honestly, do you think that GTA won't sell in the top 30 of those games? I hope that this is just a really bad joke thread.

Well Halo is a single plat game. For what its worth I think Halo 4 will sell at par with GTAV on the 360.

Its unlikely GTV will achieve CoD numbers. What makes the CoD numbers most impressive though, is how well it sells with annual releases. Neither Halo or GTA can achieve that.

GTA was never relevant to me.

But, I don't like open world games and I liking being the good guy who takes out the bad guys. Unlike GTA where you play as a criminal who kills cops and innocent bystanders.

What you think it should be higher, or lower? 

If you think it should be higher I highly disagree. It may be highly recognizable and have huge nostalgia factor, but only 1.5 million sales in 3 weeks on an 85 million userbase? That's not that impressive. GT5 was over 3 million on a userbase half that size. 

This post nails it pretty damn well. This is a question that does not need to be asked, I mean we are on a sales website and most of us know how well many series sell. 

Just  screwed around on GTA IV a couple nights ago with friends on the multiplayer and that game is the one I have  gone back to for the longest period of time after it's release date  compared to any other by far.

Okay cool, yeah I agree with you. Wasn't sure if you were some Nintendo fan thinking it should be up there with Call of Duty or whatever. 

Good guy means protagonist. Bad guy means antagonist.

If you want specific examples, here's a list:

Cloud good, Sephiroth bad

Master Chief good, Covenant bad

Commander Sheppard good, Reapers bad

Mario good, Bowser bad

Solid Snake good, Revolver Ocelot bad

Link good, Ganon bad

Allied Forces good, Axis Powers bad

Survivors good, Zombies bad

Freedom fighters good, Oppressors bad

Good good, Evil bad

It's all about context.

I think it's pretty easy to tell when you're playing as a good guy or a bad guy. In GTA you usually play as a criminal and a murderer who kills police or as I like to call them the good guys. Sometimes the games make it look like the cops are corrupt, but most of the time you just kill random people and regular cops doing their job.

Look, I'm not making any judgments about people who like GTA. As a sandbox it's full of fun stuff to do. Causing havok is fun. I just don't happen to like playing in a sandbox for long nor do I enjoying being the bad guy. I've played through both Mass Effect games twice. Once as Male and once as Female, but both as full paragon. That's just my thing.

How do you know they're more concerned than Activision? The quality of CoD hasn't gone down the drain.

Anyway, Black Ops sold over 26 million units. GTAV won't achieve that. What Black Ops sold in one year is more than GTAV will sell in its life on the HD twins.

This is not asking if you like it or approve of it. This is about the games relivancy which is mostly judged by the number of people who play it which is up to 20 million plus for the last game. That number is way more relivant than most games. Part of the reason it is not more relivant is it's cortroversial nature which turns many people off, but it is still turns many people on in a big way. Also it is called an anti-hero which many, many games have, infamous being the most obvious game I can think of off hand with an anti-hero.

Of course GTA is relavent.

In fact, if someone were to make the argument that GTA V will outsell CoD9, I wouldn't argrue against them. If I remember correctly, GTA4 was bigger than COD on PS360 when it released. It wasn't until MW2 when the CoD sales eclipsed GTA. One could make the argument that the increased install base gave CoD an advantage over GTA4, which can cause misleading numbers in determing which brand is bigger, or more relavent.

How will GTA fare against CoD when released on equal install bases? I guess we will find out.

Also, I've noticed some people claim that because CoD can post big numbers yearly, that makes the brand bigger because it manages to resist franchise fatigue. I'd say that these yearly releases are actually an advantage rather than a disadvantage. The yearly releases give consumers a chance to come back to the CoD name every year. I'm willing to bet that CoD missing a year would decrease sales & brand power. It would likely encourage fans to buy something else like Battlefield or something. So yeah, I don't believe annual releases increases franchise fatigue amongst consumers. As long as the quality remains sufficient, then annual releases, espescially around the holidays, should cause much franchise fatigue.