Rockstar has seen critical acclaim and great success from its Grand Theft Auto franchise. At the same time, gamers and critics have loved the game, it has had its share of heat in the form of controversy around the games violent and sexual content.

Despite the good and bad publicity, GTA IV proved to be a very popular game when it launched on the PS3 and Xbox 360. Shortly after launch, Rockstar announced that the Xbox 360 version would also get exclusive download content. Today Rockstar announced that GTA IV is now available on the PC.

According to a report in the NYT, Grand Theft Auto IV reached sales of over $500 million in its first seven days on the market. Take Two Interactive said the game sold approximately 6 million copies worldwide since its launch last Tuesday.

The numbers significantly exceeded expectations of many analysts who expected to see around 5 million copies sold in the first two weeks. Take Two also stated that 3.6 million of those copies were sold the first day of the launch globally for around $310 million in sales. This number even exceeds the numbers we saw for the Halo 3 launch for both first day and first week sales.

Grand Theft Auto IV went on sale worldwide today and many retailers such as Best Buy and GameStop opened their doors at midnight last night to meet fans across the country who created long lines to be one of the first to get their hands on a copy and spend the rest of the night playing. The GTA 4 launch from Take Two is expected to see sales that will rival that of last year’s Halo 3 release, with numbers nearing $400 million for around 6 million copies sold around the world.

The Grand Theft Auto 4 game is available for both the Sony Playstation 3 and the XBox 360 which greatly broadens the audience. Some speculate that the launch delay from last October also allowed more people to have time to buy the latest generation of game console and built more anticipation for the launch. Take Two says the delay was due to technical hurdles that needed to be overcome.