You may have already guessed this, but now it's official: Grand Theft Auto 5 has been something of a success for publisher, Rockstar. Guiness World Records announced on Tuesday that the game has smashed six world records, including the highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours and the fastest entertainment property to gross $1bn (£626m). Released on 17 September, the game sold over 11m copies in its first 24 hours, 1.5m of those in the UK. It hit $1bn in sales within three days.
The sprawling crime adventure has also claimed four other records, for best-selling video game in 24 hours, best-selling action adventure game in 24 hours, fastest video game to gross $1bn, and highest grossing video game in 24 hours.
It managed to beat the lifetime sales of predecessor, GTA IV, within three weeks. "GTA totally deserves to be recognised as an icon of modern British culture," enthused Guiness World Records editor-in-chief, Craig Glenday. "Gaming is no longer a niche hobby, as GTA 5 has proved, and how exciting that it's taken on the might of Hollywood and won. I'm also doubly proud as a Dundonian to welcome this home-grown series back into the Guinness World Records book."
Most of these records were previously held by Activision's Call of Duty series, which has become the industry's biggest success story since the arrival of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007. The latest title in that series, Call of Duty: Ghosts is released on 5 November and will need to put on quite a fireworks display to reclaim its position.
Meanwhile, Grand Theft Auto Online, the connected multiplayer mode that allows GTA 5 owners to battle each other for the best cars, weapons and apartments, is still suffering technical problems. Launched on 2 October, the game's servers were unable to cope with the huge demand, causing connection difficulties for thousands of owners.
Since then, bugs have plagued the service, randomly wiping saved games and characters. Rockstar has apologised to gamers, and is regularly updating a swtatus page on its website. New patches for the game have eased problems, but players are still logging in to discover that their in-game characters are missing, together with all their cash and game progress.
Currently, Rockstar is advising customers not to create a new character if they find their saved game missing. Instead, they should quit out to the story mode, then re-enter GTA Online through the pause menu. Players are also advised to end every GTA Online session by hitting pause, then selecting exit to single-player, which forces a game save. Finally, if the message "The Rockstar coud servers are unavailable", is encountered, the recommendation is to quit out rather than hitting retry or continuing online with a default character. Further fixes are expected soon.
Gamers have hit forums and news sites to vent their frustration. "Level 20, lots of missions complete, garage bought and a marvellous time had getting that far," wrote one reader on the Official Xbox Magazine website. "Tried to get on yesterday and my character's gone, I'm level 0, yet strangely I've still got my cash. Not playing the online until it's restored/fixed or I may give it a swerve all together."
On Eurogamer, "Lost my fourth character save in two days last night, so I'm giving it a while before I try it again and everything's been fixed."
And fixing the problem will be a major concern for Rockstar. Market intelligence firm SuperData has calculated that Take Two, Rockstar's parent company, could see $165m in revenue from digital content attached to GTA 5. Most of this is expected to come from subsequent DLC (downloadable content) additions, such as new story missions, however the company predicts that more than $40m could be generated from microtransactions within GTA Online. Players are able to pay real money to get in-game cash – but if technical problems continue, that figure could be dented.
For now, though, the story is one of unprecedented success, especially for the UK games industry, which has struggled in the global arena for several years. Analysts will be watching the Call of Duty: Ghosts launch with calculators and record books ready ready.
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Source: Tablet Android
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