Here’s irony for you – the Xbox 360 has taken the lion’s share of GTAIV sales since the game launched, with a 57% share of the action compared to the PS3’s 43%. So much for brand loyalty, eh?

And the good news for Microsoft doesn’t end there either. According to Chart Track Xbox 360 console sales are 18% ahead of the PS3 since the big game’s momentous arrival, and are actually 47% higher than the four week period prior to launch. Meanwhile the game itself has racked up an incredible 1.3 million sales in the UK so far. We’ll leave you to work out how that breaks down per console.

Looking at hardware sales year-to-date, though, and the picture is slightly less cheerful for Microsoft. Indeed, PS3 sales since the year began are still 10% ahead of Xbox’s. Then again this is a marathon not a sprint, the Xbox 360 is way cheaper than its rival, it already had a sizeable installed base before the PS3 even launched and those downloadable GTAIV episodes may yet bring a chunk of punters over to the 360. So let’s just wait and see how things pan out.