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)
