As most people are probably aware, 2008 is a presidential election year. One of the things political analysts will be looking at closely is whether the winning candidate has "coattails," or the ability to boost the vote totals of fellow party members running for the House and Senate.
One of the reasons Republicans are fond of Ronald Reagan, for instance, is that his coattails in 1980 were long enough to substantially reshape the Senate. By contrast, some Democrats are still grumpy because in 1996, Bill Clinton overwhelmed Bob Dole in the electoral college, but the party still lost two Senate seats.
The video-game industry has a similar view of new game releases. It's great for a title to sell a gazillion copies, but the real question is whether that game will boost the sales of related products -- in particular, the relatively expensive hardware  needed to play it. On all fronts, the early returns for Grand Theft Auto IV look good.
Console Manufacturers Happy
GTA IV was released on two different platforms -- the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft 's Xbox 360 -- and both manufacturers are reporting higher console sales as a result. The only disagreement is about which company is getting the biggest boost.
Aaron Greenberg, director of product management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, told NextGen.biz that "we expect that GTA IV is definitely driving a lot of people to Xbox 360. ... The fact that we know that we're outselling [the PS3] two-to-one on the game is a pretty good sign that a lot of those games are going with a new console out the door."
That version of events was disputed by Sony Consumer Electronics, which said in a statement that "as expected, the demand for Grand Theft Auto IV drove sales of the PlayStation 3 entertainment system within the first 24 hours, continuing the strong legacy of the franchise on PlayStation platforms."
Neither of the console manufacturers provided documentation of GTA IV's effect on their console sales, in part because sales information for the game is still being compiled. The only figures so far are from England, where Elspa's Chart-Track put GTA IV's first-day sales in the United Kingdom at more than 600,000, setting a new one-day sales record. (continued...)
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