17 percent of
Grand Theft Auto IV purchasers were minors age seven to sixteen, according to a new Nielsen survey focusing on the game.
Of these, 61 percent of the young gamers bought the game on their own; 39 percent had "someone else" buy the game for them, said Nielsen
as reported in game news site GameDaily.
"Interestingly enough, parents/guardians were pegged as the biggest facilitators for getting the controversial game into the hands of these young respondents, garnering 80 percent of the response," said Nielsen. "Friends, siblings and other relatives rounded out the other 20 percent of the response."
In May, the Federal Trade Commission conducted an "undercover shopper" survey that found kids sent into 253 different stores to buy Mature-rated games were turned down 80 percent of the time.
Also among the findings in Nielsen's
GTA IV report was that 25 percent of those who bought the game on Xbox 360 did so with that platform's exclusive downloadable content as a primary factor, while 64 percent said they just "prefer" the Xbox 360, according to GameDaily.
