While the gaming community is working itself into a foam-mouthed frenzy ahead of tomorrow/tonight's release of Grand Theft Auto IV, analyst Michael Goodman is expressing doubt about the game's ability to maintain momentum at retail.

"I think all the preorder programs now in place for these top titles really end up taking the long-term sales out of many games", said Goodman, who is the director of digital entertainment at tech research and consulting company, the Yankee Group. "So I don't think Grand Theft Auto IV is going to have those kind of legs."

While it's certainly not uncommon to see a big release have a massive first couple of weeks then tail off at retail, David Cole, president of market research firm DFC Intelligence, has said that GTA IV is unlikely to be one of those games. He made a comparison to the Halo series, saying, "If you look at Halo titles historically, they've always been the type of games that everybody rushed out to buy, but the Auto titles have always had lots of legs".

He pointed to GTA 3, which was not only the best-selling game of 2001 in the US, but also the second best-selling game of 2002 - right behind Vice City.

Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst, Michael Pachter, has said that he expects GTA IV to sell 9 million copies before Halloween.

Cole also made reference to the attempted takeover of Take Two by Electronic Arts, saying, "EA is going to have to either up their bid significantly or pull back for six months to a year and hope the Grand Theft Auto hoopla dies down, keeping their fingers crossed that Take-Two is not on a winning streak".

This comes in the face of EA dropping its offer for Take Two to $25.74 (£12.96) per share.

You can catch SPOnG's latest GTA IV hands on right here.

^{Source: Reuters}