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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.
The game will be released for both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 on October 16th, 2007.
The Xbox version will have "episodic releases" via Xbox Live.
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
if anyone wonders, here the original Summary:
Grand Theft Auto IV Unveiled As 360 Exclusive
Posted by Zonk on Tuesday May 09, @04:03PM
from the didn't-expect-that dept.
E3 Microsoft XBox (Games)
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 an Xbox 360 exclusive.
Episodic content is just a way for them to raise the price of the game without raising the price on the pricetag in the stores.
I'm sick of this crap where game companies think they can get $1.00 out of us for what would have been $0.10 of content had it been in an expansion pack, or included in the game to begin with. I'm also pissed at all the stupid moron gamers that buy this crap that 'costs less than a cup of coffee' because they don't understand that they're paying way more money in the long run; thus letting the micropayment mind-games continue.
I wish one of the next-gen consoles didn't have an online component, so they wouldn't be able to pull this crap. I'd buy that console instead of the other ones.
Changing material after the fact destroys any context for comments written to rebut the claims published on slashdot. May I suggest a retraction next time? It's the honest thing to do.
AFAIK, VC and SA is based on the GTA3 engine. GTA4 is a new engine, hence the new name.
It's too bad that Nintendo generally (and Miyamoto specifically) hate GTA. A Nintendo-style sendup of GTA starring Mario would be pretty cool. He could go into business selling mushrooms on the street, aggressively taking territory from Bowzer's gang [of Haitians].