Last night the New York Times let slip that Grand Theft Auto IV pulled in more than $500 million in its first week, selling an astounding 6 million copies globally, 3.6 million of them on the first day alone. This morning Take-Two confirmed the report, adding some well-deserved back-patting to the numbers.

To put it in perspective Halo 3, the previous record-holder, earned $300 million in the first week.

"We knew Grand Theft Auto IV would break new ground in terms of the player's experience, with its compelling story line, extraordinary gameplay and action that ranges over a broad urban canvas. Now, it has broken sales and rating records as well. Grand Theft Auto IV's first week performance represents the largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment, and we believe these retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date. We congratulate the entire Rockstar team on creating a must-have experience that takes the legendary Grand Theft Auto franchise to a new level," said Strauss Zelnick, Chairman of Take-Two.

"Rockstar's goal is to make each new title in the Grand Theft Auto franchise even better than those that preceded it, and Grand Theft Auto IV is a smashing success on that score. Grand Theft Auto IV makes full use of the power of next generation technology, and offers players an experience unique in the interactive entertainment medium. This game sets a new standard in the industry, with critics hailing it as both an artistic and technological masterpiece," said Ben Feder, Take-Two's Chief Executive Officer.

The real question now is what this record breaking, Halo 3-smashing game will do to the EA/Take-Two talks.

This is the first (and I hope the last) senseless advertisement to try and ride the coattails of Grand Theft Auto IV's tremendous success to get people to buy things totally unrelated.

Target knows, the ad says, that you're spending all of your time playing GTA, but don't forget Mother's Day. That's right: GTA and Mother's Day in the same sentence. Classy.

It's only been a day since Grand Theft Auto IV hit stores worldwide, but boy has there been a lot of things to report, from the reviews, to impressions of multiplayer and comparisons of the systems, to reports of console freezing, and online killing problems, to how some New Yorkers are using the game as a form of catharsis. If you've been skimming our coverage, here is a break down of the stuff you probably don't want to miss.

Mothers Against Drunk Drivers released a statement today saying that they demand the Entertainment Software Ratings Board reclassify Grand Theft Auto IV as an Adults Only game because it includes a mission in which "players have to drive drunk."

Each year nearly 13,500 people die in drunk driving crashes and another half a million are injured in alcohol-related traffic crashes. This is why MADD is extremely disappointed by the decision of the manufacturers of the game Grand Theft Auto IV to include a game module where players have to drive drunk. Drunk driving is not a game and it is not a joke. Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable. MADD is calling on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board to reclassify Grand Theft Auto IV as an Adults Only game, a step up from the current rating of Mature and for the manufacturer to consider a stop in distribution – if not out of responsibility to society then out of respect for the millions of victims/survivors of drunk driving.

I've contacted the organization to point this out to them and seek a comment, but have not heard back. I'll make sure to update this post if and when we do.

I received my copy of Grand Theft Auto IV today from Rockstar and tucked inside the box along with the game was this pretty damn cool replica of Liberty City's Statue of Happiness. Note how well it blends in with my other bobbles?

The Rocky Mountain News is hosting a chat session on the newspaper's website later today about Grand Theft Auto IV. They've asked me to drop by at noon (Mountain Time) to take questions and send out answers about my story for the paper, the game's release and other things game related. Of course I said yes, if for no other reason than to have a chance to talk with folks who don't usually play games.

If you're interested in joining in on the conversation head on over to the link at noon.

Chat with me [Rocky Mountain News]

Earlier today we broke the news that some Grand Theft Auto IV gamers were having problems with the game on both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

For them, the game was freezing up during the introductory cut-scene, something that neither I nor Mike experienced during our time with the game on both systems. To be clear, we have no idea how widespread the problem is, but it's certainly on Rockstar's radar and making the rounds both in our tips line and on forums.

Rockstar declined to comment on the issue officially, so I went to the phone and called up Rockstar Support to see what they had to say about the problem.

A very friendly, and obviously unhappy, fellow answered the phone who, after thanking me for not yelling at him and apologizing profusely for the problem, spilled quite a bit of beans on the issue:

The SIXAXIS motion controls in Rockstar Games' sublime opus Grand Theft Auto IV feels like a last minute appendage, and not a particularly useful one. It's like the game's third nipple, you know it's there, and maybe you can't resist a fiddle, but no good will come of it.

When Mike told me that he didn't like the SIXAXIS controls for the game, and wasn't even able to complete the tutorial, I chalked it up to some innate hatred of the PS3's motion controls on his part. In fact he did admit that he doesn't really like the PS3 games that use SIXAXIS motion sensing, but there are several that I quite like (Warhawk comes to mind), so I decided to give it a whirl.

After playing through GTA4 on the Xbox 360, I swapped seats with Mike and settled down to get to the bottom of his SIXAXIS hatred. A few minutes into the tutorial I figured out what the problem was. The special SIXAXIS controls for this particular game suck, they're absolutely abysmal.

I suppose with some time I could master using the bike, in fact it wasn't that hard, and maybe one day I would fly the helicopter, but that's not the point, the point is there's no benefit using the motion sensing in Grand Theft Auto IV.

The in-game tutorial for the controller, which is an annoyingly permanent option on your in-game cell phone, walks you through the four ways you use the special controller in the game. Here's the break down and my thoughts:

As Mike McWhertor and I alluded to earlier this week, we both spent five days last week holed up in a room in a swank San Francisco hotel playing through Grand Theft Auto IV. Yes, all of the way through.

The embargo for our official review and other hands-ons, impressions, comparisons, stories and whatnots doesn't lift until Sunday (10 a.m. Crecentral), but the package of stories I wrote for the Rocky Mountain News ran this morning. The story for the paper is geared for a much more mainstream audience, so I'm not sure how much you all will get out of it, but here's how it wraps up.

In Grand Theft Auto IV the story isn't just an amalgam of cut scenes and cleverly written dialogue, it's the experiences I create, too. It's now, watching Niko stand, his shoulders slumped, that the depth of this game finally hits me.

Niko's journey, the one crafted by Rockstar, may have ended, but Niko's adventures in the story I am creating have just begun.

If you're looking for something to pass your time that is, I believe, free of any major story spoilers, than hit up the link.

I was happy to see that the story not only took over the entire front page of the feature's section, but even got a mention on the front page of the paper. Too bad they went with a headline that sorta highlights the violence of the game. I suppose they would have done the same thing for blow-out coverage of a movie like Once Upon a Time in America.

Grand Theft Auto: A Brutal New World and What the developer of Grand Theft Auto IV champions [Rocky Mountain News]

A peek at Gamercard aggregator MyGamerCard.net reveals a long list of Xbox 360 users already racking up achievements on Grand Theft Auto IV since an illegal torrent of the game was leaked yesterday and early copies started showing up in people's homes.

Neither Rockstar nor Microsoft itself have yet responded to Kotaku's requests for comment. Neither has Sony commented on any action it might take regarding video of the game being played on its network — video that GameTrailers, for its part, has since pulled — so it's unclear yet how any of them plan to address the software pirates.

Xbox Live's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb, did say, however, that he was unable to comment yet due to the "need to look into this further," so we can assume that Microsoft, at least, is investigating.

I received a big, flat square box in the mail today packed with Grand Theft Auto IV swag. It included some pretty funny stuff:

A Swingers baseball cap
A Swingers baseball T
Two GTA IV stickers
A foam GTA IV four-finger
A mousepad from in-game cybercafe tw@
An I <8LC lapel pin
A N1KO license plate

Now I just need to figure out if I should give this stuff out on the site or keep it for this year's Funde Razor Child's Play party as a giveaway.

If you're jonseing for GTA content with about two weeks left till the game hits hop over to our round up of impressions and details.