Grand Theft Auto Sales Could Surpass Call of Duty

After alleged leaks in the past, yesterday a seemingly legitimate map from Grand Theft Auto V found its way onto the internet from an allegedly prematurely sold copy of the game's official BradyGames strategy guide. It showcased what gamers might be getting to explore in a few days with an enormous and sprawling landscape to lay waste to. It has been long suspected that the map for Rockstar's newest installment in the franchise would be their biggest to date, but it was never clear exactly how large that would turn out to be. Even when getting a look at the map it wasn't easy to judge exactly how big it was when compared to others in the franchise.

Luckily, Reddit and NeoGAF users have been pulling together to give us a visual scale of how big the map actually is, which is pretty darn big it turns out. Here is a comparison between the new map and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the franchise's previous biggest map. There were rumors that the it would be bigger then all of Rockstar's open world maps put together which seemed far-fetched, but it is not hard to fathom the idea now.

Still struggling to visualize exactly how big this map is? Well, how about using the real world as a scale? When scaled and placed over Google maps, it looks as if Grand Theft Auto V's world is comparable if not bigger than cities like London, Toronto, San Francisco and Manhattan. In the below picture, you will also get to see it compared to the entire Grand theft Auto IV map.

Of course this comes with a disclaimer. These are only comparisons made by the community, who may or may not have slaved over the accurate scaling. Looking at the San Andreas comparison, some of the roads match up to size, while others don't, so  it is not 100% clear how precise the scaling is.

Another point to consider is that even though the map is bigger, it does not mean it is automatically 'better' than all of Rockstar's other maps. While San Andreas had a bigger map than Grand Theft Auto IV, Liberty City was more populated with things to do, which some might argue makes for a better map.

What say you? Is size everything? Do you think having a size this big is daunting or exciting? What areas are you most interested in visiting?

Grand Theft Auto V is out on September 17 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

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Follow Patrick Dane on Twitter at @PatrickDane

Sources: Reddit, NeoGAF