Yeap, I think it will hurt the sales, most likely in my country :P

it wont hurt them anymore then other fields are hurt with piracy

Piracy doesn't damage sales nearly as much as the big companies will have you believe.

You look at those download numbers and you might see 30K downloads.

100% of them can't play online
X% is likely to get , bug's , error's from the pirate version = They'll buy official game
% are likely to be downloading for the sake of playing early = They'll buy official game
% Won't buy GTA and are downloading because it's free = No love lost
% Are downloading GTA because they think they can run it on their PC's = Idiots

GTA IV 360 will outsell the PS3 regardless however Piracy does and will have an impact on sales , it could possibly have a positive effect even.

 How many of the 6 have cancelled their pre-orders?  I bet none of them did.

I do not see this having an impact on sales.

most of the people want to play on-line, so i believe GTAIV will be a huge seller on XBOX360..

100% cant play on line is not true
bugs in the games is not even remotly true

Of the 30k downloads you will have about 5-10 % that download and try it on their unmodded console, another 5-10% that doesn´t have a clue how to unpack the files or don´t have a clue how to burn a game. Then there are people that burn the game wrong so they download another version from another site and sometimes some files go wrong in the download and then you will have to (you don´t have to but most people do) download the game again.

The download figures should be taken with a grain of salt and not made out to be that important to the industry and it works both ways as it can steal sales away from the publisher but it also adds sales because of downloads as others have stated before and also I do and I am one of those that download everything I am Interested in and if the game doesn´t fail miserably then I buy it.

The rest of your statements I fully agree with.

3 of them but they dont have live. games are to expensive in the u.k compared to other countries. like most things you buy in the u.k

GTA : SA was one of the most downloaded games of all , and it still became the PS2 most sold one . People download them true , but much more actually buy them :) So no , piracy wont affect sales of the 360 version :)

This is anecdotal evidence, but I know three people who are getting the 360 version (including myself) and have never heard of the torrents. Only one person I asked had heard about them, and he doesn't have a PS360.

OT: Mario Galaxy was hacked and pirated weeks before it cameout. I think we all know how THAT turned out