GTA IV Will Sell 9 Mil, Hamper Film Ticket Sales

Michael Pachter estimates that the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto sequel will sell over 9 million copies during the fiscal year and, even more, that no less that 6 million copies will be sold during the first week - if these predictions turn to be true, we'll definitely have a record that will be hard to beat by future game releases.

Also, Pachter claimed that the game will generate some huge revenues, somewhere around $450 million, but it will also be the only Take Two success this year. He also states that the publisher doesn't really know how to handle their franchises, quoting adorable games like Max Payne or Mafia who haven't seen follow-ups in the past years. And that is a different approach, if we consider that Activision releases a new installment every year, milking the cow like nobody else. Well, maybe some publishers really care about the quality of their games!

Still, these huge sales of Grand Theft Auto games - even if they don't reach the predicted 9 million - will have an influence on... cinema releases and revenue, according to analyst Mike Hickey. He said that the 29th of April release date of the game will "eat into ticket sales for the May 2 theatrical release of Iron Man". He uses as an argument the release of Halo 3 last year - when the game was released, Hollywood people blamed Bungie's title for the poor ticket sales during that period. Hickey says they might be right - both the Halo and GTA audience (and basically all the video game consumers) is aged 18 to 34 years and that is the same potential audience for the Hollywood release. Of course that 6 million of these people staying home, playing Rockstar's game, will eat a lot of revenue.

Another reason for joy: this confirms that video games are the future!