The fact that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas eclipsed the sales of every other videogame in the UK on its launch weekend is important, but only to the games industry. The fact that revenues from the opening weekend of the game narrowly beat the UK's biggest ever movie box office opening weekend (Harry Potter and the Prisoner Of Azkaban, if you're wondering) is a lot more relevant; and combined with the fact that the buzz and media coverage generated by the game has touched the hallowed levels reached by a new movie release, it provides more proof of the growing importance of videogames than could be provided by a mountain of figures.
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This was truly the kind of buzz that is generated by the arrival of a new Harry Potter film, a new Lord of the Rings or just about any other major movie franchise, and in fact, it utterly put in the shadow the sales of, and excitement surrounding, any other 18-rated product ever. Quentin Tarantino can't match these numbers, and Martin Scorcese can't touch them - only a team of largely anonymous developers in Edinburgh can generate this sort of excitement about a product with anything other than a PG sticker on the front.