Take-Two boss Feder was bullish about the game's prospects on Monday, telling Reuters that sales of GTA IV would exceed Wall Street expectations. "Our expectations are very high, higher than analysts give the game credit for. All the analysts had a [sales] number, give or take, and I think we will be on the upside of that rather than the downside."
GTA IV has been tipped to generate $400 million in first week sales, smashing the $300 million opening week record set by Halo 3 last year. Prominent videogame analysts like Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter and Janco Partners' Mike Hickey have said that they expect the game to shift around six million units in its first week on sale.
On Monday Pachter told the Associated Press, "The addressable market at launch is about 24 million consoles. So how many will sell in the first week or month or few months? Nine million. That's the number. That's about a 35 percent attach rate. By year's end, it'll be somewhere between 11 and 13 million because more consoles will be sold before the holidays."
Many stores worldwide opened their doors at midnight for the game’s launch. Specialist US retailer GameStop opened thousands of branches while UK-based Game opened over 260 stores. Customers who hadn’t pre-ordered a copy of the game were warned that it would be difficult to secure one during the midnight launch due to high demand.
The title has been receiving universal critical acclaim from the gaming press – it currently has an average score of 99 percent on review aggregator Metacritic.
The most commonly cited forecast in the media seems to be 6m copies sold worth $400m first week. Take-Two think this is too low? Wow!
