Vice City To Xbox, Not GTA?

Thanks to IGN Xbox for their report that Grand Theft Auto:Vice City may be coming to Xbox this Christmas, but without the famed 'GTA' name. According to the piece: "As many insiders know, the Grand Theft Auto series is supposed to be PlayStation 2 console exclusive, however sources reveal that Rockstar is circumventing the agreement by stripping the Xbox version of the title Grand Theft Auto, and simply repackaging the game as Vice City." If true, this would mean that Rockstar wouldn't need to wait until after the next GTA game was released to lose Sony exclusivity, and could put out suitably renamed/rebranded GTA titles on other consoles sooner, rather than later - a fascinatingly sneaky concept.

Comments

Bad Form

[limekiller4]

Yeah, they're Rockstar, but how stupid is it to give Sony of all people the big double deuce? Bad Fscking Move. Because trust me, Rockstar, you will see the same people coming down that ladder that you saw on the way up.

I will admit that I have not looked into this past the blurb (so apologies in advance if a closer look would have revealed all this to be bogus), but if it's true this strikes me as very, very poor form. You got there, in part, with Sonys help. Incredible games, but I really hope their lawyers cram it up your ass.

Re:Rockstar Would Pay Hard

[Babbster]

...I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Sony blocked Rockstar titles in the future as a form of punishment.

Only if Sony is beyond stupid. That would be the equivalent of saying to Rockstar, "No thank you, we would rather NOT have those millions of dollars in royalties."

If Rockstar WERE to evade the exclusivity deal in this matter, Sony might sue them, they might simply demand a portion of the cash they paid for the exclusivity back (Rockstar, Take Two, et. al. can easily afford it at the moment), and they would certainly be wary of doing any more exclusive deals with the company. They would not, however, discourage Rockstar from making PS2 games. The fact that Rockstar sells millions of units means that Sony makes millions of dollars in licensing fees. And Sony ain't Nintendo with the the whole grudge thing - they're in too many markets to take that kind of narrow view.

Re:Sony's grip on GTA series

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be highly dissapointed with the level the multiplayer is at right now. I've tried several versions of it, but until they just create an entirely seperate mod that can start in game and basically just use the city as a huge race track (at the very least) it's no good. There is a tremendous potential for this addition to the game to be huge. I would absolutely love and likely be instantly addicted to a MMO GTA. Imagine the original concept of Quake clans applied to GTA, virtual gangs would control different parts of the city, custom player skins and car types...I see a huge potential concept lying currently untapped by Rockstar. How cool would it be to be able to carjack other players, set up complex gang wars, street races, intoduce car upgrades and all hell will break loose, you could do all kinds of things with it. I can only hope Rockstar will professionally develop a multiplayer aspect of their next GTA game just so my friends and I can race around the city in an over-the-top demolition derby, with innocent bystanders.

BTW, if you ever get bored with GTA3, I can't imagine how you could, get a GTA3 car stat editor and start changing some car stats. If you do this, here's a tip: Lower the cheetah, make it weight 50000, max out the top speed and accelleration, lower the z coordinate for the center of gravity, and make the damage multiplier 0. You'll be driving and insanely fast, near indestructible (not bulletproof), great handling car (you might want to expirement with braking, I don't recall what it's called, but it's hard to stop 50000 lbs of car travelling an estimated 200mph without good braking.) This is assuming you're using the PC version of course, but you can still probably edit an iso image of your plastation game if you have something capable of ripping it (I'd assume "dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/path/to/file" would do it, correct me if I'm wrong).