77% dropoff for Grand Theft Auto? Wow, that's more than I expected too. To me, the rate at which GTA sales hold up is by far the most interesting question in the market right now. I know I'm not the only one who theorized that the latest GTA game would see weaker staying power than its predecessors, due to install base/cost issues. Now, it's WAY too early to draw any conclusions from this, but I find it interesting nonetheless.

Another sign of a front-loaded game is a large increase in hardware sales on the week of release. Generally speaking, the bigger the spike in hardware, the more front-loaded the sales of the software tend to be. (The ultimate example of this is the sales of Final Fantasy games in Japan, which often spike hardware by 100% on release week - and also do 2/3 of lifetime sales in week #1!) The latest Grand Theft Auto might fall into this category, albeit to a lesser extent - time will tell.

It's also noteworthy that Halo 3's sales fell by 83% worldwide in week #2 (and Halo is usually referenced as a classic case of a heavily hyped, highly front-loaded game).

@Viper: We actually know quite good what are UK sales this week for GTA and WiiFit:
Wii Fit:
3 week: 52k
Total: 390k

GTA IV 360:
2 week: 132k
Total: 646k

GTA IV PS3:
2 week: 81k
Total: 495k
(for more data check BKK post in PAL charts thread)

@Source: Ioi actually said that games in UK are more front-loaded than in other part of Europe/Others, so we can expect smaller than 77% drop in Europe. NA games tends to drop harder but it may not be the case this week. I think that good second week fore games in EU compared to NA is partialy based on the fact that most games in EU have less days to sell in their first week; but this was not the case for GTA4.

GTA4 still beats Halo 3 which dropped 79% after first week in UK with one day less to sell in first week.

 Actually UK accounted for more than 50% of gtaIV sales in EU...and almost 50% if we count "Others"...and your calculations are wrong: according to chartrack (see VGC homepage) x360 sold 132k and ps3 81k.

your predictions of 500k copies of GTAIV is ok for EU/Others...but you have to consider that roughly half of them (if we are to consider last week sales) probably will come from UK. 

Given that most shops I tried in London last week had no stock of the game at all (360 or PS3) I think the drop is a little skewed due to out of stocks rather than drop in demand.

Of those shops that did have it they only had 360 but no PS3 - although when I asked they wouldn't confirm if they just had more 360 stock or where selling slightly more PS3 version than 360.

 So, that;s how 62% for 360 is explained. Silly persons there in chart track. They didn't ask you first.

Anyway. Here in greece, it is safe to say that over 60% of played GTAIV, is PIRATED. And expect this trend for Italy, and Eastern Europe, for the part it is tracked down.

Maybe you should specify that this is for the United Kingdom. Some people are not too bright.