Analyst: Judge not GTA IV on sales, success is in tie ratio
Ben Schachter, analyst at UBS, tells investors that they shouldn't judge Grand Theft Auto IV's success on total sales, but on the game's tie ratio. What Schachter means is that GTA IV's success can't be compared to previous GTA's raw sales numbers because there just aren't as many now-gen consoles in homes as there are (were) PS2s and Xboxen. He believes the game must be measured by the number of units sold divided by the number of consoles available to play it in consumer's homes.
Schachter postulates that if GTA IV receives a Metacritic score above 95 that the tie ratio could hover around 30% of the available market, meaning US sales could eventually reach between 7-8 million units. He believes globally that sales could reach 10.5 million units by the end of this year. Schachter concludes that GTA IV sales will meet or exceed expectations but the strong sales won't protect Take-Two from the grasp of Cthulhu EA.
