To everyone’s surprise, according to the latest figures released by NPD Group, GTA IV failed to be the “savior” of Xbox 360 (or at least of the PS3) in terms of sales.

NPD Group said that in May only 186,600 Xbox 360s were sold, while Sony managed to pass the 200,000 mark by selling 208,000 units.
Before the official release of GTA IV, the analysts have predicted that GTA IV will boost the sales of both platforms on which it was made available. Although there was a small disagreement on whether the sales of which console will be more boosted by GTA IV.

The situation is somehow similar to what happened in April when, despite the release of GTA IV on April 29, Xbox 360 sold only 188.000 units, while PS3 followed in close with 187.000 units. For the poor results in April the analysts have blamed the short period in which the game was available at the retail stores.

Last year, the release of Halo 3 increased the sales of Microsoft’s gaming platform. The game was released on September 25 and, during October, Microsoft sold 528,000 Xbox 350 and  surpassed Nintendo’s Wii for the first time since the 2006 holiday season.

Microsoft had high hopes that GTA IV would play the same role for its hardware sales especially since in 2006, Microsoft and Rockstar Games announced a strategic alliance to provide exclusive episodic content for Grand Theft Auto IV on Xbox Live. In February, the creators of GTA IV confirmed that the additional content would be released this autumn. Unfortunately, they did not provide any other details about their intentions, even after GTA IV was officially launched.

Microsoft has issued only a short statement saying that the additional content would be released in September. It will be interesting to see what will happen with the Xbox 360 sales when the additional content for GTA IV will be released.

However, Microsoft seemed pleased by the release of GTA IV and the company said that Rockstar’s game has helped the Xbox Live community to reach the 12 million members milestone.

Of course, there were also analysts who have predicted that GTA IV will increase the sales of PS3. However, if in Europe Sony offered a special PS3 GTA IV bundle, the offer was not available in the United States.

Despite failing to boost the hardware sales, GTA IV holds its number one position for the second month in a row, with the Xbox 360 outselling again the PS3 version, in a 2:1 report (871,300 units versus 442,900 units)