Video console sales unaffected by big game

New York -- Grand Theft Auto IV sales, at 4.2 million copies since its April release, have yet to boost sales of the video game platforms that support it, analysts said.

"The continued success of GTA IV is not translating into big hardware sales for the PS3 or the 360," NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier told The New York Times.
Combined sales of the two platforms that run versions of Grand Theft Auto IV, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3, were 396,000, about half the sales of the Nintendo Wii, although that platform has yet to introduce a compatible version of the game, the newspaper said.

In May, sales of the Wii reached 6750,000, while 209,000 PlayStation 3s and 187,000 Xbox 360s were sold.

Hardware, software and accessory sales for video games exceed $6.6 billion so far this year, on track to reach about $22 billion by years' end, industry analysts said.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.