Partners in crime: Rockstar and retail in £100m haul

UK games retail made over 100m from software sales last week as Grand Theft Auto V broke all UK records.

Based on GfK Chart-Track data, 2,532,731 games were sold over the last week, the vast majority coming from GTA V. That 100m number does not include console or accessory sales, which also grew last week.

The Rockstar game sold 2.25m games in its first five days. That’s 250,000 units higher than the previous five-day record held by Call of Duty: Black Ops.

It’s not quite the biggest week of all time, but it’s close and follows a period of depression for retail game sales. GTA V made more money in five days than the entire UK retail games market made in June, July and August combined.

GTA V was the fastest selling game in HMV history,” said the chain’s games boss Phil Browes. Midnight openings were a huge success, and most stores sold out by lunchtime on day one.”

Blockbuster’s games head James Morton added: It was phenomenal. We’ve seen record-breaking sales this week. GTA V is just the start of a fantastic peak season.”

UK stores hope for a buoyant end to 2013. The release schedule is slight, but there are some major titles on the way, including FIFA 14 out today (Friday, September 27th).

Tesco games buyer Jon Moss added: GTA V has been everything we had hoped for and more and sets us up for what promises to be a thrilling end to the year.”

GTA?V’s sales means the UK boxed software market is now in growth for the first time in four years.

GTA V IN NUMBERS

• Hardware sales last week rose by 275 per cent. But that’s only an increase of 23,000 units, so most GTA V buyers already own a console.
• PS3 console sales shot above 360 by over 10,000 units, due to a GTA V bundle.
• But Xbox 360 had a greater share of the software: 57 per cent of all GTA?V copies sold.
• GTA V accounted for 89 per cent of all units sold last week. That means all other games sold a combined 250,000 units.
• Thanks to GTA, the UK games market year-to-date is in growth in revenue terms, up 2.1 per cent.
• The IGN review of GTA?V received 2m unique views. All GTA content on the site last month hit 34m page views.