GTA IV broke the UK one-day selling records for a game when it launched on Tuesday this week, Chart Track has revealed.

Early estimates say a total of 609,000 copies were sold in the first day, whizzing past the previous record of 501,000, held by GTA: San Andreas in 2004.

Xbox 360 version sold 335,000 while the PS3 version racked up 274,000, both one-day records themselves for their respective consoles.

GTA IV could go on to break many other records, since an analyst at Wedbush Morgan has reportedly predicted 13 million sales worldwide are achievable by the year's end.

I was one of the many punters who queued for the game; but first I had to buy an Xbox 360. My only option was to buy the console bundled with three games because standalone copies of the game were sold out. And once I had added an extra controller, I was £290 out of pocket.

Now, realising my 15 year-old TV can't handle 60Hz Pal (needed by some Xbox360 games), I'm also going to have to buy a new TV. And since buying anything with less than a native 1080p mode and 1:1 pixel mapping (so I can use it as a big PC monitor) seems a waste of cashola, GTA IV is, in essence, going to cost me around £1,000. Great game though.