In 2013 Rockstar beat Activision at their own game. In fact, as far as the entertainment industry is concerned, they beat everyone. Grand Theft Auto V became the biggest name in entertainment by hitting the $1 billion revenue milestone within three days - faster than any Justin Beaver album, faster than any Twilight film, or anything else. This open-world crime caper broke a total of six Guiness World Records for sales in the process. That sounds a ludicrous achievement for a video game, so let's take a quick look at those just to be sure: 1. Best-selling action-adventure videogame in 24 hours 2. Best-selling videogame in 24 hours 3. Fastest entertainment property to gross $1 billion 4. Fastest videogame to gross $1 billion 5. Highest grossing videogame in 24 hours 6. Highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours Ok, so a lot of that sounds like different ways to say the same thing, but the point is that Rockstar Games made an unbelievable amount of money out of this, one of the most hotly anticipated releases of all time. By the time Take-Two Interactive revealed their 2014 fiscal reports, total sales were sitting at 33 million copies. An incredible success story, make no mistake. Obviously a release of this magnitude is going to have a heavy development and marketing price tag attached to it, but Rockstar knew that it was a pretty safe investment - by 2013 gamers we're in a full-blown frenzy for a follow-up to the brilliant GTA IV, so we all knew it would be a hit at retail. You have to be very certain that you are delivering a fantastic product when you're prepared to spend $265 million to make it happen. After hearing the sales figures, though, that development and marketing figure sounds almost insignificant, doesn't it? Still, Rockstar Games knew their target market, knew they had a stunning game on their hands, and knew it was going to be more than worth the money. Our number one entry on this list, on the other hand, is more of a gamble. And a significantly more expensive one...
Game-obsessed since the moment I could twiddle both thumbs independently. Equally enthralled by all the genres of music that your parents warned you about.
