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Grand Theft Auto IV Unveiled On 360
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.
Sounds like the new GTA will actually be for both the 360 and PS3, but extra GTA episodes will be availiable exclusivly through XBox Live. So the original game will be for both but there will be extra content exclusive to the 360. Stay tuned for more details folks, but the MS conferance.... well all I can say is .... WOW!
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
This is actually pretty cool. It means that the acheivements and gamerscore are coming to Vista. Xbox live support for multiplayer (good bye gamespy) and its cross platform. I know PC gamers will dispise the concept of playing with console kiddies but given the chance I think this will be huge. Friends lists, video and voice chat, gamerscore, acheivements this is all big and welcome news for Vista. The additional connectivity to the windows community will only help the 360. Leave it to microsoft to once agian figure out how to leverage its OS monopoly to help in other markets.
Ves
correct-o-mundo, i crapped when, as a GTA fan, i read it was exclusive to MS in the summary while the story advises it is episodic content is the exlcusive bit.....seeing as how that MS live thing already puts 1 - 5 buck dents in the wallets of gamers for crap like "new horse armour" in Oblivion or a new house, i'm picturing the same for GTA - go to a new bar for only $4.99.
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!
I would easily pay $4.16 a month for the kind of service that Microsoft is going to offer, cross platform, via Xbox Live..
But, I guess I understand that some people just can't give up that extra Quarter Pounder w/Cheese Meal once a month..
As others have commented, it will be released for both PS3 and 360 at the same time.
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.
The expectation of GTA lock-out was the one barrier which has kept me from seriously considering the 360.
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?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
How do you know the PS3 cannot be upgraded? It still has Bluetooth and USB support, I'm pretty sure it can handle peripherals. It also has very flexible AV In/Out support. Whether memory card and wifi peripherals, and HDMI output can be added is not something I'd be speculating about just yet.
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.
-- jchenx
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.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
OK I really thought I was over the whole Halo thing and was MUCH more looking forward to info about Too Human, but DAMN! For a teaser trailer all real-time generated in the actual game, that was pretty cool! OK so maybe I am still a Halo junkie and have just been in denial 'cause I REALLY cannot wait for that game!
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
but why would PC gamers pay to play on Live when they can play on free servers elsewhere?
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.
If you remember, the uproar over the horse armor pack led them to offer the next content at a much better price.
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.