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In gauging the buzz for Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV, Nielsen Games discovers that a relatively sizable portion of purchasers were actually minors below the age of 17.  Its weekly Video Game Tracking survey tracked interest in GTA IV through interviews with over 6000 respondents for five weeks starting from April 28th.  Of the 6000 quizzed, 736 interviewees had already purchased the game, and another 1582 expressed strong intention to do so.  Nielsen notes that 17 percent of those who already purchased the game were aged 7 to 16.

Perhaps of more poignance to cynical gamers (who already expected minors to be playing the game for the heck of it) is how 61 percent of these underaged gamers managed to purchase GTA IV themselves.  GTA IV is rated "M" by the ESRB for North America, so techically only individuals aged 17 and above should be able to procure a copy on their own.  The remaining 39 percent of the GTA IV-equipped minors went the proxy route; 80 percent of this remainder got the game straight through their parents, while the other 20 percent went through direct/indirect relatives or friends.  According to Nielsen, parents who purchased GTA IV for minors were either uninformed over ESRB ratings or had no issue with their children playing the M-rated game in the first place.

Now weren't parents supposed to be more worried about their childrens' exposure to violent video games versus pornography or alcohol?  To be fair, parents noted there is still a great digital divide between them and their children when it comes to games; children simply know their way around them new-fangled console games better, so parents don't feel well equipped to supervise/limit play.

In other GTA IV findings, Nielsen Games concludes that 25 percent of GTA IV purchasers who chose to get the game for Xbox 360 did so because of the prospect of exclusive downloadable content.  The remaining 64 percent simply stuck with the Xbox 360 through sheer platform preference over the PlayStation 3.