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Take Two/Rockstar Reveals Plans, Designer Sues Over GTA
Thanks to Yahoo for reprinting the latest financial results of videogame publisher Take Two/Rockstar, including much information on new titles and plans. The company has announced Red Dead Revolver, "a stylish, western themed, gun-fighting extravaganza" for PS2/Xbox which was originally created for Capcom before developers Angel Studios became Rockstar San Diego and the project was handed over. Also noted is the "expected March release of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City... in Japan", after the licensed-to-Capcom GTA 3 "has sold approximately 300,000 copies... making it one of the most successful debuts of a Western video game in Japan." The company also announced the return of the Army Men franchise on their budget Global Star label, following the dissolution of creator 3DO earlier this year. However, there are also a few issues, as the SEC are unhappy with previous financial dealings, and "plan to recommend civil action against the company for alleged accounting violations", and elsewhere, a Scottish game designer has filed a suit claiming he, uncredited, inspired the design of the Grand Theft Auto series.
Just for the record, min spec (according to ebgames.com) for GTA:VC PC is 915MB of hard disc space +635MB additional if your video card does not support DirectX texture compression. It should be obvious that the Gamecube would not support DirectX anything. This is already above the magic 1.5GB limit strictly for storage. It can be assumed that at the min spec some info streams off the disc even on PC. Has anyone done a full install of VC that can give a precise amount? It would be (presumably) extremely difficult to do GTA as a multidisc since (presumably) the map streams from the disc. There would be a point in the city where crossing the street meant switching discs. Ugh.
Its also probable there are techinical difficulties beyond pure storage. It is quite common for developers to have difficulty porting to Nintendo consoles due to their (and Sony's) significantly proprietary hardware. PS2 to XBOX is less of a problem because no "optimizing" needs to take place just to make it run.
Of course, truth be told, its still all just about cash. As in: Sony paid a bucketload to have GTA be exclusive. Rockstar eventually saw they could make more than a bucketload porting it to XBOX and got out of that deal. They obviously don't feel a Gamecube port would be profitable for whatever reason at this time.
...even if it was legit, it seems like it would pertain to GTA and GTA2, Rockstar could easily claim (I'd think) that the 3D makeover divorces it from any code this guy handed his interviewer. And GTA3's success was certainly not built on top of those two games, which were moderate sellers at best.
Name the last title you saw nintendo publish that had that particular word associated with it.
Haha, you know you're gonna get blasted for bringing up the kiddy bullshit because it's so wrong. So you resort to an even more specious "controversial" label. How many video games are controversial, anyway?
Nintendo ALLOWED several companies to publish "controversial" games on the 'cube. Remember BMX XXX? Neither does anyone else, but it was controversial (and censored on the PS2, don't forget). True Crime is another GTA type game, Hitman 2 is on the 'Cube (without the Mosque level, but that was axed on all console versions at the request of the publisher, NOT Nintendo).
The fact is that Nintendo isn't stopping anyone from developing on the Cube due to blood, guts, sex, blasphemy, or whatever you might define as "controversial". Publishers have to make that choice now-and they generally don't like bringing out "controversial" games on any system-let alone one that has the reputation as a "kiddy" platform and dead last in the console race.
Yeah, but it depends on your definition of billion dollar company. These are just sales, after everyone takes their own cut and the employees are paid, there's *only* a few hundred millions left.
Amazing that a game about killing innocent people by driving over them and killing other gangsters could make so much money.
Umm... GTA is a THIRD PERSON game; nowhere in the article was a FPS even mentioned.
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