Take-Two on Why GTA IV DLC Didn’t Sell Well

This is neat looking.

Grand Theft Auto IV was a huge success, both critically and commercially, scoring a 98 on Metacritic (PC version excluded) and selling over 13 million copies worldwide. And yet the two downloadable episodes, which both recieved similar critical acclaim, didn’t sell as well as hoped.

Take Two CEO Ben Feder shared his thoughts at a recent press conference:

“Both we and [Xbox-maker] Microsoft believe there was a big market for GTA IV episodic content and some factors have affected their performance. Both were released significantly after the core unit … GTA IV, which was launched in April of 2008 and therefore weren’t able to leverage GTA IV’s initial marketing campaign and initial launch fervor.”

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City, the retail disc that contained both The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, sold around 100,000 copies. Feder remarked that the DLC was most appealing to those who had already finished GTA IV and wanted more story, which was a smaller market than they expected.

I don’t know how well the DLC did on Xbox Live, but I imagine the folks at Microsoft are probably kicking themselves right now over the reported $50 million they paid to keep the episodic content exclusive to Xbox 360.

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  • SiNTAX

    I think it has very little to do with the reasons stated here at all! Going from what a lot of my friends have said, I think it came down to them not wanting to play any more GTA IV. They all were so fed up of the constant phone calls and the lack of FUN in the game, but some bought the Saints Row 2 DLC instead. For myself, I bought both DLC episodes for GTA IV on day one and have been very happy, but I don't know any one else on my friends list playing them.

  • spacestationvideogames

    There are a lot of spin offs of GTA now that it is no longer a unique game like it used to be.