Okay, we promise that this will be our last Grand Theft Auto IV story.

At least unless something else of any Earth-shattering consequence is announced between now and 5.30pm.

And let’s not bet against that happening, eh…

For now, though, we have two pieces of late-breaking GTAIV news from Chart Track. Firstly the game has just seized the UK first day sales record. An incredible 609,000 copies of the game were sold within 24 hours of launch, meaning that GTAIV has thrashed the record held by the previous title-holder GTA: San Andreas, which managed only a paltry 501,000 on its debut.

GTAIV has beaten the Xbox 360’s sales record too, with 335,000 boxes shifted compared to Halo 3’s 266,000. Likewise it has veritably hosed all over the PS3 benchmark of 80,000 sales set by GT5 Prologue, with 274,000 copies sold. Impressive, no?

Of course this means that more copies of the Xbox 360 game have been sold than the PS3 version, as things currently stand. It’s a close-run thing, though.

Maybe it’s the higher resolution, the superior online experience and the promise of those downloadable extra episodes. But it’s a bit early to pronounce an overall victor just yet and Chart Track says it’ll provide a more fulsome analysis of the first week’s sales shortly. No doubt we’ll report it too, like the GTAIV-obsessed drones we are…