@Nazatips ...

What do you think about VGC's 2.5 mill estimate for NA ... add that to UK figures and its 3.1 million day ONE, without mainland Europe ...

Id expect around 3.5 million copies sold day1 and 5 million - 6 million week one ... and then with massive drops ( ie 90% decline in sales) week 2 sales should be 500 - 600k ... and then the game will continue to drop till it sits at 100k per week for a few months ... or years ( look at how GTA:SA is STILL selling ... )

Kyros said: the GTA franchise isn't going to get the free ride it used to get. Until now it seems to work quite well. The thing is that GTA4 combines being the biggest selling franchise (I think) of the last gen with being a kick-ass game with some of the best reviews ever. So we will have to wait and see. For the userbase discussion perhaps GTA will "enhance" the userbase of 360 and PS3 by a console or two .

It's wayyyy too early to claim "some of the best reviews ever."  The review embargo only ended 2 days ago, and the game only has 1/4 of the reviews it will get in its lifetime.  Ironically, the PS3 version is more likely to end in the top 10 than the 360 version cause few people care about it enough to review it.

Metacritic and gamerankings are hardly obscure... both are used far more than any individual site for reviews.  Personally I've never been big on reviews anyway.  I certainly don't consider SMG the 2nd best game of all time (despite it being excellent) and I've outright despised some highly reviewed games (Oblivion, FFXII).  

@naznatips: I think you are too conservative and you don't really look on the numbers we already have.
In UK and US first day sales are at 3.1 million. I think it can be rational to assume it is over 4 million including mainland Europe (UK is 1/3 of X360 and less than 1/4 PS3 Others userbase so even assuming that GTA4 won't appeal there as good as in UK 0.9 milion is still pesimistic).

Your prediction of 4.5-5.0 million first month will be surpassed first week (and maybe even reached first day). I know it sound ridiculus but I can see this game selling over 7 milion on its first week, (Halo 3 sold in first week 75% more than it sold in first day and GTA4 has more time this week than Halo 3 had).

You are saying that Halo 3 isn't selling that good but GTA4 is bigger, Halo 3 sold 3.8 mln on first week, GTA4 will beat that number on first day. In UK only X360 version sold 20% better than Halo 3. And PS3 version also surpassed Haloo 3 first day.

You think that userbase is that big of a problem? Halo 3 was released on less than 12 milion userbase and by now have sold 7.6 milion units.
GTA4 was released on more than 30 milion userbase so it can surpass Halo 3 significantly if it will be able to obtain similar attach ratio. And I really think that GTA4 will have bigger legs than Halo 3.

I've just read Source news on main page and it supports my estimations:
He estimates 1.7 mln for Others day one. With 2.5 mln in America So we have 4.2 milion first day.

He also expects over 4 milion first week in NA. Add 1.7 milion from Others (only 1 day) and you have 5.7 milion: safely over you Naz' 4.5-5.0 mln estimate for first month. And this is without sales in the rest of the week in Others (so real number may be around 7 milion).

Uh , off topic, but that predicton was mad. The best selling PSP game is the first GTA and it sold ( to retailers ) 8 million copies. The second best selling game on PSP is the later GTA ( again ) and it sold to reatilers 4.5 million copies.

There is no chance in hell that ,at this point of time, a PSP software could outsell GTA:LC or going near it ....

Didn't the "only" ship 6 million copies at launch for the game? If so I don't see how they are able to sell 7M unless there is a pretty big second shipment already before the end of the week. Also The Sources numbers might have a pretty big margin of error because the amount of sources is probably lower than for the weekly data and for instance Brawl's numbers ended up around 900k while ioi first stated them at around 1.25M. Also the 1.7M for Others seems to be an estimation partly based on the 600k for the UK and not so much on actual data. All in all I see the 4.2M as a ballpark number and in reality it is somewhere in the range of 3.5-5M first day sales. 7M is possible when there are enough copies available and the real numbers end up at the high end of the first day sales, but if first day numbers end up being a bit optimistic it could end up close to 5M as well. Don't forget, Halo 3 "only" sold around 1M copies for the rest of the week compared to 2.5-3M copies first day.

13 millions by the end of the year!!

Prediction : Wii Fit will never catch up!!! 

@koffie: I haven't seen any info about shipmeant.
I know that Source estimates may not be accurate but for now we don't have anything better.

Halo 3 actually raised 170 mln $ in first day and 300 mln $ in first week (in US):
http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKN0438777720071005

So it grew quite a bit. In UK it grew first week/first day ratio was 1.75. And GTA4 has more days in its first week than Halo 3.

Actually the 300 mln $ probably "were shipped" (vgchartz number is lower than 3 milion so it would mean that one copy costed more than 100$ and those 300 mln$ is for US not NA) But also 170 mln $ from which most first day sales are derived probably were shipped.