A source close to Rockstar has confirmed to us that the development studio will be releasing two additional dowloadable content packs for Grand Theft Auto IV, that both of them will be coming to the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, and that one of them will focus on the Irish families that Nico helped in the first episode. This confirms earlier rumors circulating around E3 that Rockstar was planning to release a DLC episode called Blood and a Four Leaf Clover.
Yes, GTA:IV will continue to sell over the next couple of years on both platforms...no doubt there will be budget editions and the like but this is at nowhere near a significant enough rate to add enough 1.5m units to the PS3 sku.
Re-releases are ways to stimulate sales, but they never are incredibly effective. The market is generally saturated within the first month and sales trail off exponentially after that.
Even with a "Greatest Hits" or a "Special Edition" with new features, sales will get propped up, but not enough to be noteworthy.
The best recent example of this is Oblivion.
Also, ignore what I say if the title is made by Nintendo or, in a much lesser way, Blizzard.
Have you included Greatest Hits version in your projection?
Many games on PC which are long sellers have multiple rereleases, including games from Blizzard and Valve. Diablo and Half-Life did not sell their LTD only from the initial release version.
Interesting data point this which shows some conjecture we had earlier in the game thread wasn't that far off the mark. VGChartz were over-estimating both SKUs. The PS3 version should perform better relative to the 360 in Europe but even the most optimistic scenario would render the PS3 version at under 5m LTD in my opinion.
I don't see it selling another millon and a half copies over the next couple of years. I've cashed out a fair bit of my short but profit here, I'd suggest, for others.
Plenty of coverage from Mr.Dille's forthcoming interview today but we did get US LTD's for GTA:IV today. The PS3 sku is at 1.96m vs 3.66m on the 360. Take 2's most recent financials had GTA:IV at between 10-11m sold/shipped so the US would represent around 50% of sales.
18