It seems everyone likes a life of crime.
According to Take Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick, who spoke at this year’s Credit Suisse Technology Conference, 125 million Grand Theft Auto games have shipped to retailers, marking a monumental achievement for the franchise as a whole. In fact, one-fifth of those sales numbers belong to Grand Theft Auto IV by itself – yep, 25 million copies – making it the most successful game of this generation thus far.
Zelnick credits the sales of the series to its irregular scheduling, rather than doing the one-a-year set-up that the Call of Duty franchise is currently going at. He also stated that he feels Call of Duty: Black Ops II is performing slightly less commercially than Modern Warfare 3.
“That’s never been the case with one of ours,” he stated. “Ours do better each time. Our view is it’s hard to make permanent intellectual properties if you annualize it, with the exception of sports titles. So far, that’s proven to be the case. IP that is annualized eventually seems to hit the wall and we don’t want our IP to hit the wall.”
Meanwhile, the latest game in the series, Grand Theft Auto V, is speeding along to a spring 2013 release. Talk about highly anticipated. This one should sell immensely well.
Published: Nov 28, 2012 04:18 pm