Grand Theft Auto V makes $800 million on first day

Grand Theft Auto V, one of the most anticipated video games of the year, has beaten sales figures posted by previous installments in the violent and controversial adventure game series. The new game generated more than $800 million in sales Wednesday on its first day on store shelves.

Take-Two Interactive Software, the publisher of the game, said those first-day sales were the biggest for the company and the Grand Theft Auto series, which seems to have lost little appeal although the first edition was released 16 years ago.

The last major version of the game, Grand Theft Auto IV, had $310 million in opening-day sales in 2008, and more than $500 million in its first week.

The video game industry is undergoing major shifts that pose big challenges to traditional publishers, as opportunities proliferate to play games on mobile devices, many available free or at low cost. But the success of the biggest blockbuster franchises appears secure for now.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II, the most recent version of the popular combat game series from Activision, earned $1 billion in sales last year after 15 days on the market. The previous installment did the same after 16 days.

New versions of Grand Theft Auto come out less frequently than others, partly because of the meticulousness of Rockstar Games, the development studio responsible for it. Rockstar has a cultlike following for the painstaking research and technical wizardry that go into its games.

Grand Theft Auto, which takes place in a world of thugs, has also become a magnet for criticism of the industry by politicians and others for its brutality.

The new version has received glowing reviews, including from The New York Times, which called it the “best plotted, most playable, character-driven, fictionally coherent entry” in the history of the series.