Both Sony and Microsoft were downright counting on Grand Theft Auto IV to reignite the drive for gamers to pick up their consoles, but NPD numbers have shown that the game has had almost no effect on hardware sales. The assumption was that the release of such a high-profile game from such a beloved franchise would be enough to push those who hadn’t yet invested in a new-gen system to leave their old boxes behind in favor of something with a little more horsepower. Things don’t seem to be working out so well, however, as neither console saw the expected jump the game was supposed to spur.

While this is bad news for the consoles, it’s also bad news for GTA IV, which could see its momentum come to grinding halt as the game simply runs out of people to sell to. Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter stated that the game’s current sales imply "potential for tempering demand over the next several months unless the installed base for PS3 and 360 grows faster." The NPD analysts themselves still expect to see an uptick in console sales, as new systems are given as graduation and Father’s Day gifts, but if things don’t look up by the end of June, it may spell trouble for GTA’s system-moving capabilities.

EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich believes that if PS3 sales improve, it will likely be due to the release of Metal Gear Solid 4, not GTA. He claims that, "This is likely due to the exclusivity factor as exclusive releases on Sony’s platforms have historically shown to be a better hardware driver than that of multi-platform releases." Sony will be very happy if this comes true, as it is entirely possible that more PS3s sold for MGS 4 will also translate into more gamers picking up the PS3 version of GTA. The company is already boasting a higher attach rate for the game than Microsoft, and selling more systems on the strength of MGS may allow then to start to close the gap on pure number of copies of GTA sold.

At any rate, while it looks like Niko Bellic may be good at a lot of things (drug running, killing people, and eluding police), he doesn’t seem to be much for selling consoles. Sorry big guy, maybe flying a helicopter into a busy intersection will cheer you up.