GTA IV: Officially record breaking

Thursday 1st May 2008 - 11:00

Day one sales records smashed, stabbing horror for queuing gamers and Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit screens

It's now official; GTA IV has become the fastest selling game in a 24-hour period. The figures - based on sales data and estimated retail transactions - show that total online and High Street sales for the game hit 609,000 in one day. That beats the previous record of 501,000 set by another Rockstar title, GTA: San Andreas, on 29th October, 2004.

In terms of the more popular console, Xbox 360 is so far narrowly bettering the PS3; 335,000 copies were sold on Microsoft's machine - 55 per cent of all formats sales. The figure is a new record for the console, beating Halo 3's first-day sales of 266,000 units. By comparison, GTA IV sold 274,000 copies on PS3 yesterday - 45 per cent of all sales - and a major leap in comparison to PS3's previous biggest day-one seller: Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, which sold 80,000 on day one.

ChartTrack director Dorian Bloch told trade journal MCV: "Barring a catastrophe, with lorries bringing stock into stores going AWOL, we can only see that sales number going up and up. The Bank Holiday weekend should be a particularly fruitful period - but it will be interesting to see how long the stock lasts as people rush to stores."

Meanwhile, reports have filtered through the tabloids that not all gamers have been enjoying a peaceful start to GTA IV. One 18-year old was reportedly mugged for his copy of the game shortly after his midnight purchase in Leyland Lancs. In a separate incident The Daily Mirror has reported that a man of 23 was slashed across the head and back as he queued to get a copy in Croydon, South London. His condition was not life-threatening. There is some confusion if the attack was actually linked to the game itself or an altercation from a nearby pub. Let's hope the violence is reserved for the mean streets of Liberty City from now on.

Finally, in a week's news dominated by GTA IV we thought it would make a refreshing change to show some screens from Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit. The first next-gen outing of the revered Japanese anime beat-em'up series finally gets its game on! A release for both Xbox 360 and PS3 is scheduled for June.

To view more images, click here