Retail set for £100m GTA boost

Financial doom and gloom may be building elsewhere, but the games industry is bucking all the trends as Wii Fit and GTA IV look set to push retail sales up to the 100m mark this week.

In the past week, ChartTrack confirmed that Wii Fit has already racked up 16m in sales. And MCV understands that over a million copies of GTA IV have been shipped into UK retail this week – and as fans of Rockstar’s gangster series snap up next-gen consoles, industry sources suggest that the combined hardware and software sales boost from Wii Fit and GTA IV could reach 100m.

Wii Fit has done very well. I can’t think of a similar week that’s matched this – it’s pretty incredible,” ChartTrack’s Chris Poole told MCV. If history’s anything to go by, it all depends on GTA – that’s going to be the main reason for hardware sales increases. The week before San Andreas’ release in 2004, the market stood at 20.8m. The week after, it was 43.3m. It more than doubled, and it looks likely to happen again.”

The retail community has understandably come out to praise the two titles.

With two ground-breaking titles being released in the space of a few days, the games industry has never been so healthy,” said Zavvi’s Stephen Lynn.

PC World’s Rene Wright added: The broadened appeal of two huge products such as GTA IV and Wii Fit means that we are seeing a huge cross section of customers driven in to the store.”