ELSPA today revealed that day one sales of Rockstar Games’ hugely anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV for Xbox 360 and PS3 have comfortably eclipsed the previous record set by GTA: San Andreas in 2004.

Tuesday 29th April sell through for Xbox 360 and PS3 reached 609,000 units - comfortably beating the previous record: GTA: San Andreas for PS2, which sold 501,000 units on Friday 29th October, 2004.

“The scale of GTA’s day one sales are phenomenal and reflect a vibrant market which continues to grow. Gamers are from all age groups and demographics with estimates putting the total number of people in the UK who enjoy games at over 20 million,” said ELSPA managing director, Mike Rawlinson.

All-time No1
Initial Day 1 ’GTA: San Andreas’ PS2 was Friday 29th October, 2004 at 501K units.

GTA IV combined PS3/360 (All formats record)Initial Day 1 sales are estimated at 609K units for Tuesday 29th April which is a new record.

Xbox 360
Microsoft’s ’Halo 3’ launched on Wed 26th Sep07 and the day 1 sales were 266K units.

The new 24 hour record is ’GTA IV’ which on initial estimates recorded 335K units on Day 1, Tuesday 29th April.

PS3
The previous record has been well and truly eclipsed. This was set recently by Sony’s ’Gran Turismo 5: Prologue’ launched on Friday 28th March with Day 1 sales of 80K.

The new 24 hour record is ’GTA IV’ which on initial estimates recorded 274K units on Day 1, Tuesday 29th April.

That is pretty impressive sales for both consoles and considering that these figures are for the UK only it will be interesting to see exactly how many units have been sold Worldwide.