GTA IV snatches $500 million in first week

6 million sales so far... Only another 12 million to go to catch up to Nintendogs. 14 million more will make it as popular as Pokemon Red/Blue. Who knows, it might even outsell The Sims... when Hell freezes over!

Budget was 100m, if it's made 500m already... anyone think a similarly budgeted film this summer will have an opening week that strong?

In my opinion, this speaks loudly in favour of actually publishing sufficient quantities to meet demand.

I applaud Take-Two for not underselling themselves and leaving shelves bare and consumers struggling to give them their money.

Do you hear that FUCKING NINTENDO?!

I guess those special editions really pay off.

Holy crap. That's all I can say.

Far from an official source but...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/videogames/ref=pd_dp_ts_vg_1

Mariokart /lols @ GTA4 -.-'
Other human beings: you can live with them and you can't live with them...

This maybe a little weird but I've never been interested in the GTA series. Never wanted to play any of them for more than an hour...I don't know why... Just don't get any kicks from killing random people...

Awesome, definitely good news for Take2!

i think theyll see a bit of a resurgence in sales come july, i know a lot of people at college who are doing the sensible thing and buying it after exams, i imagine thats probably a fairly common idea

To increase sales, maybe they should make an "E" rated version of the game. Take out the swearing, sex, violence, crime, and replace it with benign activities.

Or, they could keep all the violence and crime, and just redraw everything to look cutesy, like Mario and the Mushroom Kingdom. Instead of shooting Itallian thugs, you're throwing "shells" at "goombas".

Same thing, right?

If any of the Mario games were rendered to look realistic, rather than being all cutesy, they'd be M-rated, too. Mario spends a lot of the game running around destroying property (bricks), stealing money (coins), doing drugs (mushrooms and poppies) and squashing animals by jumping on them! After he kills the animals, he takes parts of them (their shells) and throws them at other animals! In some sequences, Mario has to BLOW UP his enemies using actual bombs. He sometimes finds and uses an incendiary projectile weapon against living targets! He knocks other people (if you define "people" as "a sentient being") into pools of lava, or pushes them into vast crevices.

How is Mario NOT rated M?

He looks like a cartoon, and not like a real person.

Make Bellik look like a caricature of an immigrant, and parent groups wouldn't care. Make Liberty City look fantastic and unrealistic, but with most of the same activities, and nobody would say a word.

And let us not forget Mario Kart: Mario and his friends (and enemies) drive around shooting at each other.

Smash Bros. is a free-for-all melee between people where the goal is to knock each other off a platform to their death, beat them to death, or shoot them to death.

I tell you--- Make Mario and company look like real people and not like cute cartoons, and they'd be every bit as bad as anything in the GTA series.

500 million? Thats kinda like, a hell of a lot better than any MEDIA (music, movie, etc) first week in history.

And yet still the media is so ignorant to us.

I am not sure how 6 million copies equates to 500 million dollars. I would imagine most people paid 60 bucks. That is 360 million no?

I know there is special editions, but what else are they counting as sales to reach 500 mil?