On Monday, GameStop exclusively revealed to Level Up that during the first week that Grand Theft Auto IV was available in its U.S. stores, 64 percent of all copies sold were for Xbox 360 and 36 percent for Playstation 3. We sought reaction from both Microsoft and Sony to GameStop's results and our impromptu analysis, a portion of which we shared with you on Monday. Today, we're publishing our conversations with the two console manufacturers in their entirety. We spoke by phone with Peter Dille, senior vice president for marketing at Playstation. Here's what he had to say:

GameStop has exclusively provided me with the percentage split on their first week sales figures for GTA IV. According to them, 64 percent of the copies they sold were for Xbox 360, and 36 percent were for PS3. So given that Grand Theft Auto has primarily been associated with PlayStation platform since GTA III in 2001, are you surprised that the PS3 wasn't able to corral a higher share?

I'll take a couple steps back. First of all, we're not in a position to share retailer specific information. I'm not sure if you got that from Microsoft or Rockstar or GameStop themselves.

No, I got it from GameStop.

Okay. It's our experience that GameStop probably does a little bit better with the early adopter crowd. There's a larger installed base right now on Xbox 360 than on PS3. So it's not surprising that there's going to be more selling on Xbox 360 than PS3. Having said that, we're really excited about the ratio. If I had an installed base advantage of 3-1, I wouldn't be crowing too much about a 60-40 sales advantage. We think it's not as high as what GameStop's telling you, if you look at [the full picture on] the national level. They're outselling us, but not by that same margin, and it's because of their installed base lead. With an installed base lead that's close to 3-1, if you're bragging about a 60-40 software split, it's clear evidence that the Playstation 3 consumer is overindexing on GTA IV, and the Playstation brand loyalty that we've been talking about is bearing itself out in the marketplace as we speak.

So when you were looking at the release of the game, you didn't think that the history of GTA on Playstation was necessarily going to bring you guys to 50 percent parity or more [in terms of GTA IV market share]?

Well, we don't really make a record of making predictions that are based on firm numbers. But what we said was, we're confident that the Playstation loyalists--the guys that grew up playing GTA on PlayStation 2--would clearly be a factor, and again, I think we're seeing that. Keep in mind as well that we're looking at a couple weeks of data. If it ends up being 50-50, that would be a monumental victory for Playstation 3. The fact that it's close to 60-40 right now is a huge victory. But if you could catch up against the installed base advantage that they have and get it to 50-50--I mean, my God, that would be unheard of.

So we're really excited about where we are today, and we're very confident about the future momentum not purely based on just GTA alone, but also based on everything else going on with Playstation, the existing momentum that we have. We feel like those consumers, as they come into the PS3 family, GTA IV is going to be one of the key games that any gamer is going to want to consider adding to their library.

In terms of the market share gap on GTA IV, do you expect it to widen or narrow over the rest of the year, and why?

Well, what I'll speak to is the gap between PS3 and 360, and we expect that to continue to narrow. That would beget a narrowing on any competitive title, including GTA IV. So again, to answer your question, it's going to narrow because the momentum is clearly behind Playstation 3 these days, whether it's the Blu-Ray victory; whether it's the holiday momentum that hasn't slowed down--we outsold them in the first two months of the year. March was a virtual dead heat with them outselling us by, I think, a couple thousand units. I think the April sales that will come out in a couple days will be another great story for Playstation 3.

Beyond the couple days of GTA sales that will be reflected in April, bear in mind that we had another very big release for our platform called, you know, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue; a big core gamer game that people have been dying to get their hands on. Then the following month after May is Metal Gear Solid 4, and that is a huge game that gamers have been waiting for. It's PS3 exclusive, so it's yet one more reason. And then we're going to roll into the back half of the year with things like Resistance 2 and LittleBigPlanet and SOCOM and SingStar for PS3. So there's a huge depth and breadth of exclusive content on PS3, and it's for that reason that we think that the momentum is behind the Playstation 3. Then you just add on top of that hardware technology superiority, Blu-Ray victory--it's a really big year for PS3.

Now, this goes to something you said earlier: I did the math on my own to compare how well each platform indexed, and like you said, right now, Xbox 360 has 70.7 percent of the market if you just look at PS3 and 360.

Yes.

Since 70.7 percent of the market is 360 and 29.3 percent is PS3, it means that PS3 overindexed and 360 underindexed in terms of GTA IV sales.

Right.

So I'm wondering what would you attribute that to. Do you think that's only sort of what you're calling the Playstation brand loyalty, or is there anything else at work?

You know, it's really hard to dissect exactly, and I think anyone who is going to pretend to give you an exact answer is frankly spinning or fudging it for their own advantage. The reason I say that is because it's hard to determine at the end of the day was it the PS2 brand loyalty that was the ultimate factor? Or was it the fact that this consumer just bought a high-definition television and decided the only way he'd he'd want to go is with a PS3 because it's got a Blu-Ray player? Is it because he realized he could also buy the PS3, play the same game [GTA IV] on both platforms on the PS3, but also have the opportunity to play LittleBigPlanet, and next month he could buy Metal Gear Solid, and all of the other great games that we know go into the decision about which console to buy?

There's lots of factors at play. So it's hard to just dial down 70.1 percent versus 30 percent and say which really came down to PS2 brand loyalty; which came down to these other factors. Having said all that, there's an awful lot of reasons why people are buying PS3 right now, and we're thrilled if any one of those are playing a role--and we think they're all playing a role. It's really a bit of a snowball going downhill at this point.

I guess you have an idea of what the numbers are--and presumably you can't or won't say until they actually get released by NPD--but is it your expectation that the release of GTA IV gave PS3 a bigger sales boost than it did 360?

Well, it's not my place to say it gave us a bigger sales boost than 360 because I don't have access to 360's numbers. What I can tell you is that the release of GTA definitely gave PS3 a sales boost. We saw it in the month of April, with just a couple days in the marketplace, but we're also seeing it each follow-on week here in May and we're really excited about that. But while GTA is a clear factor, there's probably some other considerations going on as well and we're really excited about all of them. Now, unlike Microsoft we don't make it a practice to break down some of those numbers in advance of TRSTs, so I know you have a couple more days to go and then we'll all have a shot at those numbers.

It's pretty unusual for both Microsoft and Sony to provide co-marketing support to the same publisher for the same title, but that is in fact what happened with Grand Theft Auto IV. From your perspective, why was that important? Why wasn't that a turn-off to you guys that there were also going to be ads out there that would have Xbox 360 stinger at the end?

Well, we take a look at the market and if there are third party titles that we feel are great games for our platform that help us sell hardware, then we've always had an interest in working with third parties.  We've got a long history of working with Rockstar on the GTA series as you know. At the end of the day, that's the only criteria that really concerns us. What our competition does is not particularly important as we think about these things. So again, we've got a huge installed base of folks who grew up playing GTA on Playstation branded products, we know there's a lot of pent up demand for it, and we wanted to get the word out that the game was out on our platform and that we're proud of it. It's a bit of an opportunity to frankly kind of ring a bell and let people know to go out and get a PS3.

We've also been hugely pleased to see the reviews. There's been a lot of FUD coming out of lots of people about what the experience would be on our platform versus their platform, and it's been great to see reviews from people like IGN that say, you know, the game actually looks better on a PS3. So, to answer your question, a game like Grand Theft Auto IV deserves to be celebrated on our platform and we're really excited about the role it will play in our marketing going forward.

Having said all that, I think a big point of distinction is that we have a lot of other things that we're talking about these days, and I'm not clear on what the other things are that we'd be hearing from, from the other camp because all we hear about is GTA from the other camp. And again, on my side I've got Metal Gear Solid 4 coming out next month; we just shipped Gran Turismo 5 Prologue; we've got LittleBigPlanet in the back half; SOCOM; Resistance 2; and a plethora of great third party games. I'm overdoing my adjectives but there's a ton of great Playstation 3 games coming out, many of which are tremendous exclusive games on our platform, and GTA is one more reason to buy a PS3, but it's one of many reasons.

And the last question is, how concerned are you about the impact that the 360 exclusive downloadable content will have on relative sales of GTA IV on PS3 and Xbox 360 going forward?

We're not overly concerned about it. Frankly, we don't know enough about what the plan is. I know that there's going to be some downloadable content at some point in the future; I don't know when that will show up; I don't know what it's priced at. The fact of the matter is, if you play Grand Theft Auto IV right now, one of the great accolades that this game is getting is just the sheer magnitude of gaming that you're getting for your dollar. People are talking 100 hours of gameplay out of Grand Theft Auto IV right now. So, there's no doubt that that's a very satisfying experience.

For all I know by the time that that downloadable content comes out people will have moved on to play LittleBigPlanet or Resistance or Metal Gear Solid. We'll see. That chapter will be written someday in the future. But right now we've got two games that are on par with each other on two platforms, the consumers have a choice between buying many, many games that are exclusive on PS3, versus potential opportunity to use their dollars to buy some additional content for a game that they played several months ago. We'll see which wins out in the end. We're very confident with our strategy.

Great. Well, Peter, thanks so much for your time, I appreciate it.

Hey, always a pleasure.

To read what Xbox's director of product management Aaron Greenberg had to say about GameStop's results, click here.