No its only on the XBOX 360 were it outsold HALO 3, look at the link.

I cant be wrong, the link says nothing about the PS3, just X360 gamerscores.

 That is for Europe. I was talking about NA pre orders. 

Halo 3 WW first week 3.84M. ioi has GTA4 pre orders for NA at, 2.4M for 360 and 1.6M for PS3. So 4M pre orders in NA.

In Europe I am not surprised that GTA4 (360 version only) outsold Halo 3.  

So do we have an estimate on how many copies they have to sell in order to break even? Course, Microsofts 50 million probably will help a bit too.

There was a thread about 100 years ago it seems now that had a rough estimate of what everyone got, like the retailer, publisher, developer, etc. That would be helpful if someone just happened to have it handy.

If they get $20 a game, they only have to sell 5 million to break even, which they'll easily get (they'll probably have 5 million on both consoles by years end). If they only get $10 from each game, it's going to take a lot longer to realize profit, which of course is not taking into account the $50 million from Microsoft. In that case, it's half for both situations, and Microsoft probably won't ever make back the $50 million, course they probably weren't aiming to.

And this is why there are not more games that live up to the same 'standards' as GTA. That's a HUGE investment for anyone to make into an unknown market. Hopefully Rockstar will be able to also reuse assets and code to make any sequels or spin offs less expensive to build.

 I'm sure they will. GTA 3 spawned two major sequels using tweaked versions of its engine.

This time around they'll do some of it with episodic DLC, I suppose.

I wonder if they're allowed to put those downloadable episodes into a disc-based compendium for PS3 owners down the line... 

 Yes - I'm sure they're planning to use Liberty City and the game engine for sequels as well to maximize profit.

hello it would need to sell between5-10m to break even have to go back to work could give better details latter if needed

MS did give them 50 Mil to play with keep in mind. THey will profit, but it makes me think how much games like MGS 4 and FF 13, ect are going to cost.