UBS analyst Ben Schachter believes that you can’t compare GTA IV’s sales in relation to how the series has done in the past on consoles such as Xbox and PS2. The reason being is because those sales were able to be higher because more people owned Xbox and PS2 than do people that currently own PS3 and Xbox 360.
He believes you must have an “attach rate” for this specific game to gauge how well it did in the market. In other words; how well did the game sell versus how many consoles there are for GTA IV to be played on.
Some believe that GTA IV’s attach rate could be around 30%. This would mean that GTA IV would have sold 7 or 8 million copies. Schachter notes that an attach rate above 26% “would beat expectations.” If the game does sell 8 million copies, then monetarily we are speaking of $480 million in sales. And all of this is before European sales are even factored in. Schachter believes that European sales “could do similar numbers.”
What do you all think? Do you think GTA IV will have similar numbers in European and U.S. markets? Will one be higher than the other? Let us know.
