Grand Theft Auto 4: the first numbers are in

Simon Brew

Guess what's just broken the record for the biggest single day sale of a videogame ever? Go on, guess....

We’ve spent much of this week admiring the huge success that Grand Theft Auto 4 seems to have been enjoying since it was released on Monday. And with the sky-high review scores still pouring in, as it approaches its first weekend on sale it seems that the Rockstar-produced juggernaut is already well on the path to world domination.

According to information released by Chart Track, the game sold an astonishing 609,000 copies on its day of release in the UK alone. That means it has broken the record set by – you guessed it – Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, by over 100,000 units. As for format split, around 55% of those copies were sold for Xbox 360 (where the game has beaten Halo 3’s day one performance in Britain by over 60,000 copies).

The PS3 version has trebled the best debut for a game on that format to date (the previous leader was Gran Turismo 5: Prologue). That, however, is not too tricky, given the lack of a bona fide blockbuster on the console before.

Where this leaves the EA-proposed takeover of Take 2, now that Grand Theft Auto 4 has shattered so many sales records in such a short space of time, remains to be seen. But one this is certain: there are a hell of a lot of people exploring Liberty City right now…