Don’t expect us to hold back on any GTAIV news - since the official announcement of a release date, there’ll be videos, sneek peeks and screenshots galore.
The latest set of screenshots released today are nothing short of impressive, showcasing a stylized world that truly surpasses its predessesor.
In other GTA news, Digital Battle has reported, nay, speculated on the PC version’s release this October. The basis for their claim? Previous GTA games have made the transition to PC six to eight months after the console release date. But who’s to say these rules are set in stone, anyway?
The hour is upon us… well not quite, but at least we know the date when the hour will be upon us. That’s right people: Grand Theft Auto IV had been dated to be released April 29th. The reason the game is taking so long is all thanks to the PS3, as Rockstar’s Jeronimo Barrera pointed out in an MTV interview:
“It’s really no surprise to anybody that the PS3 was definitely a contributing factor to [the delay].”
Thankfully now the progress on both systems are “neck and neck”, and the experience on 360 and PS3 has been quoted as “identical”.
Australian gamers can breathe a sigh of relief as GTA IV has been given an MA 15+ rating, avoiding a repeat performance of the fiasco that was San Andreas. It’s the most restrictive rating in Australia, as no R18 code exists in the region. The corollary of this most pleasing news is that the game’s content is probably complete.
You’ve gotta love a good bit of drama and that’s exactly what we are still getting from the Rockstar/EA tiff. It seems the developers of The Simpsons game at EA are still very much bitter, as came to the fore in their appearance on Game Head. Here is Executive producer, Matt Selman‘s take on the events:
The game begins with Bart wanting to play a game called Grand Theft Scratchy. Of course this is a parody of Grand Theft Auto. And Marge immediately takes it away from him. She tries to clean up the town and stop the game from being distributed in Springfield because Marge is against video game violence. She uses horrific violence to stop video game violence… in a video game. Thats called irony… The people who make Grand Theft Auto, they spazzed out like little babies.
Publishers Take Two have announced that Grand Theft Auto IV will be pushed back from its planned October 12 release, and will now hit shelves some time during the second fiscal quarter of 2008.
Straus Zelnick, chairman of Take Two, had the final say in the decision, which arose from “almost strictly technological problems… not problems, but challenges.” The company viewed the most recent build yesterday, but made their verdict today to allow additional development time.
You can imagine the frustration felt by Saints Row 2 developers Volition, who pushed back their release date to avoid competition with GTA IV.
Despite the bad news, CEO Ben Freder reassured the public that:
We are in sound financial condition and have a great product line-up. Grand Theft Auto IV is going to be the defining next generation videogame action adventure.
News of the delay of GTA IV announced at the close of NASDAQ trading, precipitated an 18% drop in share prices during the after-hours session of trading. A further drop tomorrow is not unlikely.
Rockstar spokesperson Hosi Simon had an unfortunate slip of the tongue in a recent chat with Games Radar. After carefully explaining that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 would be seeing identical versions of Grand Theft Auto IV, he clumsily added:
But I guess if you want the complete experience with the episodes, then yeah, you should buy the 360, I suppose.
By “the episodes,” he of course means the two expansion episodes to GTA IV, that Microsoft are rumored to have paid USD 50 million to secure for release exclusively on the Xbox 360.
