The Next Web

A milestone in gaming: Grand Theft Auto IV breaks 500 million barrier in first week

Written on May 8, 2008 – 1:48 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck

The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our 'About' page and subscribe to our RSS feed.

If you came here from Digg it would be great if you could actually Digg us too! Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!

The days that a Hollywood blockbuster gets the headlines when they break box office records are over. Gaming is hot, and you can be pretty sure that gaming is here to stay. Last week Grand Theft Auto IV was released and over 6 million copies were sold in the first 6 days, coining in a nice 600 million dollars!

To give you an example, the box office sale of GTA IV exceeds sales of all movies in theaters right now. It exceeds the $407 million that Pirates of the Caribean generated in the first week. It exceeds the 255.000 sold copies of Madonna her new album, Hard Candy, in the first week (not only in numbers but also in price per item sold. A CD is $20 dollars and GTA IV $90).

“Grand Theft Auto IV’s first-week performance represents the largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment, and we believe these retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date” Strauss Zelnick (producer of GTA IV) stated.

The conclusion: Games are the new blockbusters!

game industry, games, gaming, grand theft auto, gta

2 Comments »

How gaming got its tail back

Written on March 10, 2008 – 10:11 am
Robert Gaal, co-founder of Wakoopa

One of the podcasts I enjoy the most is The 1UP Show. It’s a series of video’s by the late Ziff Davis Media covering new games and the people who love ‘em. As an entrepreneur focused on the web I do enjoy how they look at innovation as consumers in the gaming space, instead of outside folks analyzing a vaguely defined market. Their latest episode contained a few interviews with up-and-coming small game developers. It struck a certain cord with me that I really felt like sharing with you in this post. Even though The Next Web is not game centric, there’s something anybody can take away from this I think. (more…)

1up, flow, gaming, longtail, playstation

3 Comments »