
Grand Theft Auto V Earns $800 Million in a Day - adventured
http://variety.com/2013/digital/news/grand-theft-auto-v-earns-800-million-in-a-day-more-than-worldwide-haul-of-man-of-steel-1200616706/
======
DigitalSea
What is even more impressive about this figure is that it's just XBOX 360 and
Playstation 3 sales. GTA V hasn't been announced for PC yet which is a
severely underrated market when it comes to games I reckon. If GTA V launched
with a PC version I think they would have eclipsed $1 billion in 24 hours,
easily, if not 1.1.

I played this yesterday (I don't own a console) at a friends house and what
they've been able to achieve on these consoles is impressive considering these
consoles aren't next gen and are resource limited.

~~~
colmvp
_I played this yesterday (I don 't own a console) at a friends house and what
they've been able to achieve on these consoles is impressive considering these
consoles aren't next gen and are resource limited._

It seems like that happens at every end of every console's life. Last of Us,
BioShock Infinite, and GTA V are three fantastic games to close out the PS3.

~~~
piggity
I wonder if the developers get a real handle on the platform and squeezing the
most out of it by the time it gets to EOL.

~~~
skeletonjelly
I was just reading about this yesterday actually. Wiki mentions the tricks
learnt from GTAIV were exploited to their full extent to make the best use of
the hardware for GTAV.

> While both games were developed for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the team
> were able to render the world of Grand Theft Auto V with greater detail than
> in Grand Theft Auto IV because they had become familiar with the hardware
> over time. Art director Aaron Garbut opined that while the aging hardware of
> the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 were tiring to work with, "I think one of the
> most amazing features is the way we handle lighting in the game to maintain
> a consistent look despite the constraints on realistic lighting and shadows
> on current hardware", he explained.[28] Vice president Dan Houser agreed
> with this sentiment, explaining that working on Grand Theft Auto IV with
> relatively new hardware was difficult, but "now we know what the hardware's
> capable of, so it's become a lot easier to move things along and a lot more
> fun, too".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gta5#Development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gta5#Development)

~~~
addandsubtract
Don't forget the experience they also gained with Red Dead Redemption and Max
Payne 3.

------
grannyg00se
That official gameplay video is really impressive if you haven't looked at the
state of the art in video games lately. It looks like a wish list of gaming
features put together by hardcore fans with no limits on budget or creativity.

If I didn't know the game was released and well received, I'd say there's no
way in hell it would be possible to put it all together on time, on budget,
and without major flaws. Damn impressive.

~~~
sspiff
I don't know about Rockstar, but from what I've heard from game developers
from big studios, they're driven like slaves. Crunch time, unpaid overtime,
wages that are not paid on time, etc etc.

It's easier to be on time and on budget if you break rules like 8 hour days
and proper remuneration of the workforce.

~~~
product50
If you don't know about Rockstar then don't comment. This is a great game and
it really appears that the developers have put their everything in building
it. Sometimes people want to work hard to make sure their output is a success.
It is not always about 40hrs work week. A great company is one which creates a
culture to build impressive products and where employees feel motivated to be
a part of it. I am not saying that Rockstar employees worked more than
40hrs/week (I have no idea) but if I were a Rockstar employee I would be damn
proud of the output.

~~~
sillysaurus2
Man, you have swallowed every last drop of the koolaid they're selling you.

Consider this situation: You've spent most of your life training yourself as a
game developer, only to find out that _every_ company you'd like to work for
will drive you like a slave. 50+ hours per week is not merely an option, but a
necessity if you want to remain competitive. And since everyone wants to be a
game developer, that means your salary is less than in other types of compsci
jobs.

So, that culture stuff you're speaking of? It's bullshit. Ultimately it's a
method of getting you to do the bidding of others. It's not about you at all.
No one is looking out for you, and while you may feel like you're part of a
team, that team has no loyalty to you. If you stop performing at peak level
for even a couple months then your prospects will be severely harmed.

Employees get to feel proud they've literally sacrificed part of their life to
help someone else succeed. And you're supporting pervasive lawbreaking in the
name of "that's just what it takes"!

If game companies are finding it hard to recruit talent, well, that's probably
because people are finally wise to their ways. You won't find anyone who was
more in love with the idea of being a game developer than I was, but the
reality of the industry is abhorrent. The shared culture has utterly decimated
any hope of work-life balance in the gamedev industry in the US. My options
were to work elsewhere or to move overseas. And by working elsewhere I get
more cash, get to work on problems that are more interesting, _and_ I learn
more.

European developers seem to have figured out how to develop next-gen games
without any of the bullshit methods of control you've described. Maybe US
companies should start caring how.

~~~
jbackus
> So, that culture stuff you're speaking of? It's bullshit. Ultimately it's a
> method of getting you to do the bidding of others. It's not about you at
> all. No one is looking out for you, and while you may feel like you're part
> of a team, that team has no loyalty to you. If you stop performing at peak
> level for even a couple months then your prospects will be severely harmed.

> Employees get to feel proud they've literally sacrificed part of their life
> to help someone else succeed.

Your tone suggests outrage but you're just describing the nature of
competition. You are agreeing to trade your time and skills for money.
"Getting you to do the bidding of others" is a cynical way to put it, but if a
certain type of team building yields good results why would a company not go
down that path? Of course you're going to be replaced if the you aren't
producing the results you were hired for, this is the nature of competition.
There is no fair or unfair. Employees are not sacrificing part of their life
for someone else, they're trading their time to someone else. No one is
forcing anyone to be a game developer.

~~~
sillysaurus2
_No one is forcing anyone to be a game developer._

That's a fine-sounding statement but in reality if you want to be a game
developer in the US then you'd better be willing to live a life where you wake
up, go to work, get home sometime later than 8pm, spend ~2 hours unwinding and
maybe visiting with your SO, and then go to bed. Repeat forever. A lot of
times even on weekends. The studios I worked for all made it regular habit to
make pizza available in the evening and then refuse to allow devs to leave.
Crunch time became a way of life. Anyone who dared not to like it risked
ostracism. Those who were fired for it severely harmed their career prospects,
precisely because every other employer has the exact same culture of insanity.

Put that way, it's more than a little bleak. If I sound outraged, it's because
it's outrageous that it somehow became the norm in the US and that nobody bats
an eye because "that's just the way it is."

It's not about fair or unfair. I'm not saying anyone should force the
companies to change. I'm saying the companies had better change themselves
before the nice little train of momentum they've built up from legions of
starry-eyed young developers finally runs out when those developers realize
they could be going off and starting their own companies rather than playing
by your rules.

~~~
dalke
"It's not about fair or unfair. I'm not saying anyone should force the
companies to change."

Why not?

What if game developers were to unionize? Or we were to strengthen the 8-hour
work day laws? Or boycott the most egregious companies?

What's wrong with those or other ways of forcing the companies to change?

~~~
sillysaurus2
It's a social problem: those who don't want to work 50+ hour weeks are made to
feel as if they're a bad employee. Those who don't need to work 50+ hour weeks
are steadily assigned an increased workload until they are. It's a nuanced
situation that I doubt a legal system could address without introducing
horrific unintended consequences of the new laws, as new laws so often do.

Unionizing is only effective in situations where employees can band together
into a shared social framework. During the industrial revolution this was
facilitated by the massive size of workplaces. But at each studio there are
usually less than 30 devs.

I think ultimately the solution is to start our own companies imprinted with a
culture of employee well-being and work-life balance. If it's a success, and
it's located in a gamedev hotspot, then all of the top talent will want to
work there. This synergizes well with free market aims, because competitors
who don't get top talent soon go out of business.

~~~
dalke
8-hour workday laws are not new laws. Why do you think they are? And your view
is basically that there should be no new laws, isn't it?

The relevant California law is that computer professionals are exempt from
overtime law if they "mainly perform intellectual or creative work that
requires independent judgment in the design, development, documentation,
analysis, creation, testing, or modification of systems, programs, software or
hardware. In 2012, they were required to earn $38.89 or more an hour
($81,026.25 or more annually, or $6752.19 or more monthly)."

My modification to that law would be to raise that to $75 or more per hour.
What might be reasonable "horrific unintended consequences" of reclassifying
programmers thusly?

"But at each studio there are usually less than 30 devs"

You don't know much about the history of unionization, do you. That's okay,
neither do I. But I do know a bit more than you do.

The early unionizations include unions that came out of the guild system, not
the factory system. For example, Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842), which settled
that unions were legal in the US, dealt with the journeyman shoeworker
Jeremiah Horne, who charged less than what the Boston Journeymen Bootmaker’s
Society required.

It was legal for him to charge less, but then the Society would have called
for a walkout. The master of the shop "would not wish to lose five or six good
workmen for the sake of one", so fired Horne instead.

So we have a union which is effective even against a shop of 10 "boot
developers", as it were.

Why do you think that unions are only effective in large factories? Do you
mean to disregard the history of craft unionism, or are you speaking mostly
out of a lack of knowledge?

------
adamnemecek
Kind of surprised that marketing cost them more than development ($115m vs
$150m).

~~~
jevinskie
$115 million? Wow. How many developers/artists/QA/management folks (or man-
hours) does that buy you?

~~~
jlgreco
That money bought them things like this:
[http://static.trustedreviews.com/94/000028992/826f/GTA-5-mur...](http://static.trustedreviews.com/94/000028992/826f/GTA-5-mural-
full-LA.jpg)

(That is a massive painting on the side of a building, incase that isn't
clear)

~~~
adamnemecek
I'd like to know what are the ROIs for an advertisement like that. I can't
really imagine that the people who will buy the game will buy it due to this
advertisement. At the same time though, Rockstar probably knows what they are
doing.

~~~
wwwong
The overwhelming majority of revenue comes in the first weeks of a game
launch. For a major franchise like this, you safely know what minimum dollar
amount you'll make. Invest in market for hopes of a big hit.

Sure, ROI is tough. But think about the wrong decision to not market and sales
flops in the first 2-3 weeks. You can't make up that lost revenue from launch.

~~~
sharkweek
Exactly -- and from a GTA franchise standpoint, their biggest success is just
hyping the release as much as possible. They have tons and tons of fanboys who
all rushed to buy copies on opening night. There was no doubt this would be a
success --

But to build awareness and convince more people to go out and buy it during
the opening weeks, that's where a poster like this comes into play. Constant
visible reminders of the release date turn a 500m release into an 800m release

------
narfquat
To put that in perspective, here is a list of opening day top grossing movies
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-
grossing_openin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-
grossing_openings_for_films), and the previous video game record was $500
million, for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

~~~
Blara
I'm not sure that is a fair comparison, Movies have a very strict number of
people who can see the movie the first weekend (seats in movie theaters and
not opening around the world, though the highest movie in the list was harry
potter which I think had "world premier"). Where games have no limit on how
many can buy it the first day, which is especially true since digital download
has become so popular.

~~~
skeletonjelly
It might not be fair but it's a comparison you'll have to get used to. What's
not fair is the way that movie profits are reported.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting)

------
cynest
I wonder if COD:GHOSTS will beat this. From what I'm seeing, GTAV has a few
advantages:

Non-yearly (or biyearly) release schedule for an extremely well-known
franchise.

No outstanding publisher issues of note, especially gaffes related to gameplay
"dumbing down"

A number of factors contributing to somewhat inflated review scores including
normal reactions to AAA titles and the GTA series' tendency to hit the right
buttons for reviews that doesn't necessarily reflect on gameplay

~~~
andyhmltn
From my own observations, GTA is an entirely different market. Sure everybody
knows about CoD but in reality, not a lot of the people I know will buy the
new one (and that can be backed up by looked at BO2 preorders vs Ghosts) but
almost everyone I've spoken to either has GTA, is buying GTA or hasn't got the
means to play it.

------
TomGullen
Really want to buy GTA V, but I am just put off that it's on old consoles! I
have a PS3, but I'd much rather wait for a PC release and have it looking as
good as it can, and silky smooth.

Or am I being prejudiced? Does it run OK on a PS3?

~~~
monatron
As it is a massive commercial product that is developed to run on PS3 and Xbox
360 I'm sure it runs "OK" on the PS3.

~~~
TomGullen
I generally find I'm perhaps more sensitive to lower frame rates than more
casual gamers!

~~~
freehunter
Are you insinuating that GTA V is targeted at casual gamers?

~~~
cwarrior
It is.

~~~
freehunter
"They are typically distinguished by their simple rules and lack of commitment
required in contrast to more complex hardcore games. They require no long-term
time commitment or special skills to play, and there are comparatively low
production and distribution costs for the producer."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casual_game](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casual_game)

------
shire
This game is just pure awesome. I think all this hype is largely due to the
previous generation GTA games. I've played all the other ones. Favorites are
Vice City and San Andreas. Previous versions definitely led the way for a
great promotion and grand opening for this game. The game play is mind
blowing.

I'm surprised the revenue surpassed Call Of Duty Black Ops 2 though that is
one of the most popular games out now and sold out on just the pre-order.

~~~
mcantelon
I was underwhelmed by GTA 4, because of the sluggishness (on PS3), but that's
reportedly gone. One of the cooler things I've heard about GTA 5 is that
they're, when online game play goes online (later this month), going to create
in-game television by piping in other player's gameplay framed with newcaster
narration.

------
plq
I'm a big fan of the series, but I decided to sit this one out until a PS4 /
GTA V bundle comes out -- The game doesn't seem to look any better than GTA IV
on PS3 and I don't want to feel like I'm playing yet another GTA IV expansion
pack for the coming years. (I just recently finished all three GTA IV story
lines. I'm not a huge player anymore)

Another thing of note about why GTA IV looks so much better than GTA 3 is that
GTAIV uses what's now called Euphoria from Natural Motion:
[http://www.naturalmotion.com/middleware/euphoria/](http://www.naturalmotion.com/middleware/euphoria/)
Its synthesized animation looks way more natural than the stitching together
of hand-made animation and I'm actually surprised that it didn't take the
character animation world by storm by now.

~~~
lotso
Has GTA V been announced for PS4/Xbox One?

~~~
freehunter
I remember seeing on reddit yesterday a link with Rockstar saying they were
not targeting the next-gen consoles with GTA V, and the speculation around
that comment was that the game likely would not be released for those
consoles.

~~~
jonlucc
I don't know if I see a reason they should spend the resources to ship it for
PS4 and XB1. They've obviously sold a few copies of the game already. I just
can't imagine the market of people who want to buy it again or are holding out
is big enough to justify the costs.

Edit: I'm a dunce. See the comment by adventured.

------
kin
glad to see main stream articles discussing the Rockstar's industry feat vs.
content controversy

------
fedvasu
Can anyone tell me how much did Batman Arkham Asylum, Injustice:Gods among us
and Batman Arkham City made?(individually) I am asking this because I feel
that DC puts their best creative writers behind games (Paul Dini for instance)
instead of movies (forget TDK trilogy, that's Noolan empire). I wonder How
much more Man Of Steel would have made if the plot was more cohesive and
deeper.

------
nonchalance
I clearly posted this 7 hours too early:
[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/take-two-first-day-gta-v-
sa...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/take-two-first-day-gta-v-sales-
top-800-million-2013-09-18)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6407415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6407415)

------
mdotk
It is the highest rated game ever on MetaCritic
[http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/grand-theft-
auto-v](http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/grand-theft-auto-v)

FYI if any of you play it and like cheat codes, here they are
[http://www.gta5cheats.com/](http://www.gta5cheats.com/)

------
vijayboyapati
There goes my productivity for the next month

~~~
erichurkman
If you're like some of my friends, your productivity has been shot for months
leading into the release, endlessly looking at the latest screen shots,
articles, teasers, pre-pre-reviews, ... They had a very effective marketing
effort.

------
skc
One wonders, pundits say mobile is the new hotness in gaming and console are
slowly becoming obsolete. Does that mean games as immersive and expansive as
GTA5 will cease to exist in a few years?

~~~
clavalle
No way.

There is only so much you can do on a small screen.

The form factor is well suited for a certain type of game.

It also limits the social aspect of gaming.

Expansive, visually stunning games built to be played on a large screen with
other people in the room or playing multiplayer will be around for a very long
time.

Mobile games have their place, but they are competing for an orthogonal piece
of consumer time.

------
Simple1234
I hope they don't mess up the PC port on this one like they usually do.

------
rjuyal
And this game deserves it.

------
bjornsing
Sales != Earnings...

~~~
andyhmltn
But they directly correlate.

