Fanboys Start Your Engines: GTA IV Sales Data

There was once a dream that PlayStation and Xbox 360 fans might come together with a unity based on 'the one true game that rooolz them all'. That game was to be GTA IV - a cultural event so immense that even hardened games reviewers fell before it in an adulation akin to the queues lining the road after Princess Diana forgot her seatbelt.

Like all dreams, however, it evaporated as a loud noise woke the dreamers. That loud noise was the pandemonium of the fanboys screaming as the day one sales figures hit the Interweb.

According to ChartTrack figures reported via UK industry journal, MCV, GTA IV is the "fastest-selling title in 24 hour period" with 609,000 units sold via bricks'n'mortar and online retail sales to punters in the UK. Good news for the team up at Rockstar North in Scotland.

The stats also show that GTA IV outsold the previous record of 501,000 sales achieved by GTA: San Andreas, on Friday, 29th October, 2004.

Right, now for the bitching... according to the stats, "the Xbox 360 narrowly nudged out PS3 in the ‘battle of the consoles’" with 335,000 copies (55% of all sales) on that platform beating Halo 3’s Day One sales of 266,000 units. Yes, GTA IV beat Halo 3.

The PS3s 274,000 copies beat its previous record holder Gran Turismo 5: Prologue (Friday, March 28th) which saw 80,000 units sold. So, quite a leap there then.

As yet there are no official stats on how much - if any - hardware was sold off the back of the GTA IV sales - but we still have the bank holiday weekend to come.

The figures have already ignited fanboy wars with Xbox supporters yelling that their game console has sold more than the enemy, while PlayStation advocates yell back about the fact that the PS3 has been on sale for less time.

We expect the Internet to melt today...

^{Source: MCV}