I'd like for someone to explain how it is a failure in the bounds of any realistic expectations. It has sold a massive amount so far, and will sell millions more through the holiday season and the years beyond. I wouldn't be surprised if the game was still charting, even in small numbers, at the end of the generation (assuming Rockstar never makes a sequel, which I hope they do).

You can argue about quality and reception all you want, but sales wise, it was a great success and still is.

Its been a hugr success and made a lot of money. Its anything but a failure

I think this graph does a good job of illustrating it:

http://vgchartz.com/swlaunch.php?reg1=All&game1=Grand+Theft+Auto%3A+San+Andreas+-+PS2&reg2=All&game2=Grand+Theft+Auto+IV+-+PS3&reg3=All&game3=Grand+Theft+Auto+IV+-+X360&weeks=100

GTA IV on PS3 and X360 fall about 1 million short of where GTA:SA was on the PS2 at a similar point in its life. The charts look similar, except the two million units GTA:SA sold on Xbox are not shown here.

Yes, GTA IV is not quite living up to its predecessor in sales, but to me the bigger difference is that GTA:SA didn't cost $100 million to make. The series has peaked, and I don't expect investments in future GTAs to be nearly as large.

In it's 26 weeks (one Christmas included) San Andreas sold 11.7 millions
In it's 26 weeks (no Christmas) GTA IV has sold 10.6 millions with less userbase

If that's not a success...

I don't think investment in the serie will go down.

You have to realize that as gaming matures the time of medium investment games that return HUGE amount of money is slowly fading away.

It is still a huge commercial success that is generating a lot of profits...

It's the same with the movie business, the more sequels you do the more they end up costing and usually return less but they are still very profitable.

The other thing is that investing 100 million$ in a GTA game is a no brainer, from the publisher's point of view the risk is still very minimum compared to trying to launch a new IP...

As for comparing with the PS2, you are not comparing similar install base. Fact is GTA4 attach rate is actually superior to the one the last GTA game had on the PS2...

Your post should read, "in terms of outselling the earlier GTA's: fail. In terms of profit compared to the earlier GTA's, which didn't cost nearly as much to produce, earning Take2 more money: fail."

How will it sell millions more in the years beyond? I could understand that if it was hanging onto the charts, but it fell right off and isn't selling squat now.

Where are the legs to get it "millions more" in sales?

selling almost 10 million is not considered a failure.

Lol so based on the reasonning in this thread :

Star Wars Phantom menace FAIL

Star Wars Attack of the clones FAIL

Star Wars Revenge of the Sith FAIL

Spiderman 2 FAIL

Spider 3 FAIL

Last 4 Harry Poters movies : FAIL

and so on........

They are all sequels to an original movie that costed less to make than the sequel and made less money...

Where can I sign to fail like that ???

Why would you include the Xbox version? It launched much later, and if you want to include versions that launched later, you should probably include sales for the PC versions of both GTA4 and San Andreas (GTA4 hasn't launched on the PC yet, so your data wouldn't even be complete anyways). Plus, the PS360 userbase at the launch of GTA4 was 30 million, compared to about 70 million or so for the San Andreas launch. And who really cares if the budget was higher? Spiderman 3 has a ridiculous budget, but it was still a resounding success with great profits. GTA4 is likely to outdo GTA3, which was the first GTA game on the PS2 and launched with (I'm guessing) a similar userbase size. And of course the budget will be smaller. They'll be using similar engines/mechanics for the future HD GTA titles, and it will be cheaper.

As someone with a Zack & Wiki avatar, you shouldn't be so quick to call a game a flop. Legs determine everything.