Grand Theft Auto IV Unveiled On 360 393
Despite expectations that this would be the least eventful of the E3 pre-conferences, Microsoft's Peter Moore drops the news that Grand Theft Auto IV will be on Xbox 360. Rockstar and Microsoft have teamed up to do exclusive episodic content in the GTA gameworld for the 360. Slated to release October 16, 2007 in North America, October 19 in Europe. Other details include lots of support for Live Arcade titles (Sonic, Galaga, Street Fighter II), the official unveiling of Shadowrun for the 360 and PC, the airing of the Halo 3 Teaser Trailer (which is already on Xbox Live), and much discussion of 'Live Anywhere'. This last is an expansion of Xbox Live to PC and cell platforms in addition to the Xbox arena.
GTA on 360 and PS3 (Score:5, Interesting)
Unified Live!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Ves
Re:WRONG... episodic releases are exclusive (Score:3, Interesting)
AND, due to the PS3 not having the same extra content I feel relatively safe in assuming this won't affect the rest of the game, it will be like having a billy stick instead of a baseball bat, little things, nice touches if your so rich you toss cash at games, but (like Oblivion) even if I have a 360 I'll probably ignore the extra content. but it won't be able to effect how to finish the game if the same game on other consoles doesn't have the option to add extra content.
so to me this doesn't look good and i hope the industry isn't going to follow suit all around, cause than we will be paying constantly to have games that used to update for free. boo, hiss, boo!
Re:Live Anywhere & Cost? (Score:2, Interesting)
But, I guess I understand that some people just can't give up that extra Quarter Pounder w/Cheese Meal once a month..
Most likely (Score:5, Interesting)
What no one is mentioning is the PC release. Rockstar tends to wait for a few months after console release before releasing the PC version. They're not being jerks. They're retooling it for the purpose of bringing it over to PC. That's why the GTA series hasn't suffered from consolitis, by and large. I'll be looking forward to GTA IV on the PC, even if I have to wait half a year.
Re:You know what that means? (Score:4, Interesting)
The X-Box exclusive DOA series is *almost* enough on its own to make me want a 360, and hopes for more HALO games also has me rather jazzed over it. My "wait and see" attitude has mostly been based on a fondness for GTA:III & GTA:VC, which were exclusive to the PS2 for about a year.
If Sony does not have the GTA series locked up in their stable, what is there left to wait and see? BluRay? The Wii controller?
Re:making shit up? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not too concerned about the memory card or WiFi, since those are all things I imagine can be easily added. It's the HDMI output that's a bit odd. Yeah, there's USB support, so is that how it's going to be done?
I do think the whole Sony presentation regarding the two SKUs was highly misleading. It seemed like the only difference between the two were the difference in HD size, but the press release later showed otherwise. Now it's the "upgrade story" which everyone is interested.
Anyway, back to the HDMI output, I thought HD-DVD and Blu-ray had to have either DVI or HDMI output? Does that mean the core PS3 won't be able to play Blu-ray discs unless you upgrade? Sounds a lot like the Xbox DVD fiasco, where you had to buy the dongle/remote to enable playing DVDs, whereas it worked right out of the box for the PS2.
Re:making shit up? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not even DVI, just HDMI. Technically, you are correct. This is the deal: currently the hardware manufacturers are agreeing in principle to only send the highest-resolution signal over a so-called protected wire, which is HDMI (which is a DVI cable wrapped in an optical audio cable, and smothered with secret sauce). Any analog connection, including the more-than-capable component connection, would theoretically be downsampled to a lower resolution, in order for the content companies to achieve High Asshole status.
However... what we can read between the lines here is that perhaps Sony, in light of having to drop an HDMI port on the base model, will not be so stingy with the signals and allow full resolution to travel via component inputs. Thats a hell of a big Perhaps, but their hand is somewhat constrained by market realities in televisions - HDMI ports are simply not very widely used yet.
Re:Halo3 trailer at Bungie.net (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Live Anywhere & Cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nearly every single Live Player has a voice communication mike. You don't have to deal with cheaters on live (I have never encountered a cheater on live, and I am not aware of any cheating software - the only kind of cheating I am aware of is sometimes player intentionaly lower their bandwidth to cause themselves to lag... but there is no software they lets people see through walls or aimbots or whatever like on the PC)... every player has an ID tied to their credit card, so people are less likely to engage in racist/stupid behavior, and when they do I can permanently ban them from my games. I can maintain an integrated list of all the players I like, send them an invitation to play directly from the game, I can see what games they are playing directly from the game.
It is definitly worth the $60 a year for the service they offer.
Re:They can stick their 'episodic content' up thei (Score:3, Interesting)
No it didn't. It prompted them to offer the later content at a slightly reduced price. ($0.10 less? Give me a break.) I have the game. I love the game. I have the Orrery add-on... If taken as a fraction of a $35 expansion pack, there is about $0.25 worth of content in it.
I'd buy the "expensive to create next-gen content" argument if the game weren't 10% content and 90% cut and paste copies of that content, or perhaps if there were more that 10 minutes of gameplay in there for $1.89. Episodic content is just a marketing ruse to get people to pay 10x more for expansion content than they used to. Next gen content isn't 10x more expensive to create, and it's not worth 10x more to buy. End of story.