May
6
The Channel Checkers has been tracking the sentiment of game store employees on their enthusiasm for GTA IV, the new game released by Take Two Interactive last week. Our most recent survey covered from April 21 to April 28. We found that approximately 62% of respondents to our survey believed that GTA IV would be the next big game in May. While that number was positive in general it was well below the 80-90% response rates we saw fro Halo 3 in the fall of 2007. We believe that GTA IV will underperform the expectations since it is clear that the game needs to be as big a hit as Halo 3 if not bigger.
We believe that sentiment surveys like ours are very predictive of game success in the video sector. The opinions of those working at the video retail outlets is powerful especially when aggregated in significant numbers and surveyed consistently.
We wonder if Electronic Arts might abandon its bid for Take Two once it becomes clear that GTA IV is not as powerful a franchise as many had hoped.