Everyone's holiday plans were screwed up a bit with the announcement of a delay for Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV, which moved the release date from November of this year to the second quarter of next year. It probably never occured to us to think about how the game retailers feel about the delay.
Games analyst Michael Pachter says that Take-Two's decision is serious business for games business, and that the GTAIV delay could shift as much as $80 million of GameStop's sales from the third quarter of this year into the second of next. He predicts that GameStop will sell 35% of the estimated 2 million copies that would be moved in the first two weeks after release, but now that $40 million will have to come later.
Pachter says, “We believe that the game would have driven hardware sales of at least $100 million, and think that GameStop would have captured a similar market share [of 35 percent].”
Don't worry, GameStop isn't going anywhere, and it's not like they won't make the same money when the game releases next year. It's still quite impressive to see how much one game can affect a retailer's sales.
[Via Next-Gen]
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
12:19 PM on 08.17.2007
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...what's that? Oh right, you make minimum wage as a game advisor there. Well...maybe they can start paying out more for used titles.
Heh.
@ Dale North I totally agree bro, it's absolutley amazing to see what a game on it's own can pull in. What kind of bothers me is what kind of game this is, GTA is lame, been the same game since GTAIII and people still dig this.
@ Lethal Dosage LOL Or lower manager/assistant manager pay or up the subscription cost or the downpayment minimum on games or charge you for looking at their neat posters :[
Jesus they've had my Mass Effect pre-Order since January 12th
Get over yourselves.