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GAME SALES TRUMP MARK SET BY 'HALO 3"

No taint of ill repute could deter the worldwide rush for "Grand Theft Auto IV," a notoriously violent video game that racked up a record $500 million in estimated retail sales globally in its first week.

Take-Two Interactive Software, the "Grand Theft Auto" publisher that's under pressure from a takeover bid by Electronic Arts, said Wednesday that GTA IV sold approximately 6 million copies in the seven days since its April 29 release.

About 3.6 million copies were sold the first day, with a retail value of roughly $310 million for combined sales of the standard $60 game and a $90 collector's edition, the company said. GTA IV is available for two consoles, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3.

The dollar figures were boosted by exchange rates that made the retail price significantly higher in Europe, where almost as many copies may have been sold as in the United States, according to analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities.

Still, the GTA results soared beyond the previously reported video-game and entertainment highs: $300 million in global first-week sales last year for Microsoft's "Halo 3" game, and worldwide first-week movie box office totals of more than $400 million each last year for Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" and Sony's "Spider-Man 3."

To bad the final game sucked.

lol at least you guys got to play the real version, us Australians get a watered down version because of our stupid classifications board. Not that I own a 360 or PS3 but I do know people that do and yeah would have been nice to play the real version

Paine, where did you steal the text from? It's much too professional for a random forum post .

As for GTA IV, I'm still crossing my fingers for a pc version, because I won't be buying a console. I rarely used one when I had one, and the price for these things is ridiculous nowadays.

The price for consoles is actually very low when you think about what kind of hardware is in it.

Really? I'm at 30% and still loving it.

Not really, not if you didn't actually need it prior to the game appearing. It's quite a bit of money, for hardware you wouldn't need if you could use it (the game) on your computer since people like me already have decent enough hardware for that (I didn't buy my gfx card for nothing).

It isn't worth it, for me, to get a console, when the games could work just as well on my pc if the companies released them on the pc (and in most cases, they do).

Sure, you might not need it, but that doesn't make a console redicilously priced/overprized .

Personally, the fact that the console can only play games and the price attached to it, is too much. You have to go out and get yourself some more controllers, you have to pay for the games, and it doesn't include a screen of any sort. You have to provide almost everything, and it doesn't do that much in fact. I know next to nothing about the hardware needed for a console, mind, but I still believe that for me to buy one again it would need to cost quite a bit less.

Your first argument here is kinda wrong... i use my PS3 as a full media center. Only using the standard firmware. It plays DivX and loads of other popular formats. Oh and there's actually an option to turn a PS3 into a dual boot with any linux version (atleast if its kernel is compatible with the hardware) and probably with some hacking you could even run windows.
A 360 can also do some pretty good work as a media centre (although the interface imo is kind of weird).
Consoles aren't just gaming rigs anymore, far from that actually.

And on the long run it's cheaper than a pc since those need new parts to keep getting everything out of games while console hardware stays the same for multiple years)