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Microsoft Shells Out $50 Million For GTA IV Content
Ars Technica is reporting on the highly-anticipated downloadable content for GTA IV mentioned by Microsoft at last year's E3. It appears that, first off, that content is only coming to the Xbox 360. Secondly, Microsoft paid some $50 Million for the privilege. This is from a financials conference call held by Take Two, and a question about a deferred payment from Microsoft reveals the general release schedule for the content. "The first 25 [million] is for the first episodic content package that's supposed to go out and that is in March of '08. That's why it moved into current because it's in the next 12 months. The second 25 [million] will be for the second episodic, the episode, and that will be later in fiscal '08."
So now when microsoft cant convince developers developers developers to only develop for microsoft platforms, they just pay them to only develop for microsoft platforms? Classic! This sort of thing used to be the subject of bad jokes and comical tales. Now its accepted business as usual. Sigh, I really hope that BOFH never becomes an acceptable business as usual type of norm ...
I'm a huge fan of GTA. I've played Vice City more than any game I've ever played. Still, this isn't enough to convince me to buy an XBox. Ugh. If they do the same on the Sony, I'll buy all of the content.
I don't respond to AC's.
Hey, if someone wants to pay me 50 million bucks, I'd write for any platform they want. Don't see anything wrong with that at all!
This is my sig.
I wont deny that id take the cash, but its still slimey ;-)
Companies paying off game developers for exclusive only content/games/accessories has been going on for along time.
Going with the whole monopoly thing, if your money is coming from a monopoly in one area, are you allow to start paying people out in other areas to exclude the competition?
Anyone know the legal issues around this, or is it acceptable?
Who knew the market for dead hookers was so crazy? I foresee a new application for Balmer's chair throwing skillz...
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Can we please refrain from using the term next gen to refer to the current generation of gaming hardware. Thanks
my band is more brutal techno punk than yours
I haven't looked closely at the financials or at the details of the call, but couldn't part or all of the $50 million in deferred revenue also account for end-user payments for the downloadable content? For example, if each gamer has to pay $19.95 for an episode (or redeem same in x360 points, whatever), and they estimate a chunk of downloads, they might just be recognizing that deferred revenue now? I don't see how this is conclusive that MS paid $50M for the content... but maybe I'm missing something?
Last gen you had:
4/8gigs of storage for the PS2
4/8gigs of storage for the Xbox
but this gen you have:
3.5/7gigs of storage for the 360
25/50gigs of storage for the PS3
Absolutely insane. No wonder Microsoft is being put in a position to have pay huge money for Rockstar to tack on extra content to the game.
news at 11... oh wait
This is a perfectly logical move for them. Sure the price seems high, but GTA4 is guaranteed to get some undecided people onto the next-gen bandwagon. If Microsoft can make it seem like the 360 version will be the definitive and most complete version, all the 360s it would sell could give MS an overwhelming installed base advantage over the ps3, making moves like this unnecessary in the future. They're hoping for a killing blow, but I think this downloadable content would need to be pretty major to actually sway someone who was going to get a ps3.
You can definitely tell from the low complexity of the world that Rockstar is being forced to limit the amount of geometry/data they stream in as you drive around the city. I'm not sure what the real world seek rate of the 360's DVD drive is, but if Rockstar is publicly complaining about it you know it has to be a serious problem for the game.
With Carmack's new game already talking about 20 gigs of texture data and games like Lair with 4 gigs of data per level. I'm not sure how anyone can deny that being forced to confine your giant open ended game to just a DVD is anything but shameful. And even worse if it is true that you are forced to stick to one layer.
The price tag may seem crazy, but the extra content is going to convince more than a few that the 360 version is the one to get. Between exclusive GTA4 content and Halo 3 on the 360, and the continued dominance of Wii sales and its future release lineup, the PS3 is going to be a hard sale even through the holidays.
For a long time, nerds have tried to figure out what the ??? stood for in the Soviet Russia jokes. Now we know...obviously, the ??? = a $50 million dollar payout from some Mega-Giant Software developer.
I don't remember any big outcry when Sony used the same tactic with the same franchise against Microsoft. Sony signed exclusivity deals for GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas when the Xbox was the new kid in the game. The difference being that they were timed-exclusives. I don't think the value of the deal was ever made public, but I'm sure it was much less.
Is this karma, irony, or both? I bought a PS2 for GTA 3, and now I'll buy a 360 for GTA 4 (among other things).
Expect to shell out at least $15 a piece for each of these "episodic" updates. I suppose this is really good news for GTA addicts who have X-Box 360's. Personally, I find it a disturbing trend that Microsoft is throwing money at developers to make them develop custom content for the 360. Nintendo and Sony don't have the treasure coffers of a Operating System monopoly to get that kind of money and do likewise. Even though this relationship seems like a win-win-win for Rockstar, Microsoft, and GTA players... I still don't like the idea of Microsoft influencing how my games are made. Imagine if Microsoft paid Irrational Games $100 million for the next Bioshock game. Microsoft could say "We want you to end the game on a huge cliffhanger. Then we want the last 10 hours of the game to be an X-Box only expansion." As a PC gamer, I'd be really freaking pissed off. But if MS threw enough money at Irrational, could I blame them for not doing it? I don't like where this is going.
In Soviet Russia, Microsoft pays YOU!
You can't recognize revenue for a service that has not yet been provided. Regulators will be all over your ass.
Heck, you can't even recognize revenue that you've already received for a service that has not yet been provided. If you sell something with a service contract attached, for example, you have to recognize the revenue for the service contract over the life of the contract, not at the time of sale, even though you collected all the revenue at the time of the sale.
That's why, when something is sold with a service contract, somewhere the price of the item and the price of the contract will be broken out. That way it's clear what part they can recognize up front (the item price) and what part must be deferred (the contract price).
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
No. end-user payments are MS revenue, not T2 revenue. It doesn't matter to T2 where MS gets the cash from.
Perhaps you don't understand what deferred revenue is. It means they received the cash, but aren't recognizing it as revenue in their financials until later.
The deferred payment from MS means that they won't be making the payment until later, though they have already secured the rights; this is completely different from deferred revenue. In terms of accounting periods, it means that MS won't be counting the expense until the second episode is available; this is because they need to state the expenses in the same period in which they state the revenues for the transaction.
Kinda flirting around with the base issue here, which is that MS and T2's financials are separate beasts, and even if MS defers the expense, it doesn't mean that T2 has to, or will. If T2 has already developed the software in question, then they should be stating the development costs ion the same period they state the revenue from sale, which should be the same period in which MS takes delivery.
Long story short, MS should declare $25 mil during the first year (period is approximate) the first half of the content is available; they should declare $25 mil spread in the period the 2nd part is available for purchase, prorated to some extent according to sales volume.
Take2 should realize their development costs split 50-50 between the periods MS took delivery of the product, regardless of when the product is finally sold to end-users; resale by MS has no bearing on when Take2 states its revenues, unless of course their revenues are based on some sort of percentage of sales (which they are not).
Note also that MS is a public company, and it would be extremely bad juju if a MS rep stated that they'd be making those payments unless they were absolutely going to be making them.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Run upstairs and ask mom what "deferred revenue" means.
How much do games like GTA cost to develop? Seems like you could produce a full blown game, and then for $50M sell a stripped down version on the 360- with future episodic downloads....
What did I miss?
Think Deeply.
And when exactly did Microsoft start forcing Rockstar to develop for the 360??
Kilroy was here.
When they ran into money problems. But regardless of why, the fact remains that Rockstar is downgrading what should have been one of the big name titles. I don't think any GTA fans care why, just that they are.
Think of all the gamers out there who have bought 1080p TVs, or highend gaming systems who now are faced with their game being downgraded to support what is effectively a two year old mid-range pc in the 360.
Just think if Rockstar had downgraded GTA IV to support the Wii and how 360 fans would feel. That's what PC and PS3 fans are looking at now with Rockstar being put in a position of having to sell out to Microsoft.
Is the flamethrower off yet? Okay, here goes:
IT WAS ROCKSTAR'S DECISION TO RELEASE GTA IV FOR XBOX 360.
1) This article deals with the arrangement for the chaptered content to follow, not the actual development of the core game itself.
2) Rockstar "dumbing down" the graphics of the title is both:
i) premature judgement, as you HAVENT PLAYED THE GAME YET, and
ii) a conscious decision by Rockstar to sell more games, as the 360 has 12 million units on the market.
The idea that you're actually faulting Microsoft for the XBOX's existence, and not Rockstar's decision to develop for it, as though they are some innocent victims whose hands were forced because of circumstance, is some of the most incredibly mind-bendingly misdirected hate I have ever seen in my life.
If Rockstar decided to make the game for the Wii too, is it Nintendo's fault for the game's graphical shortcomings?
Man oh man. If Rockstar had some issue with the 360, then they could have chosen not to develop for it. But at the end of the day, they obviously felt the system was powerful enough to realize the game they wanted to make. Nevermind the fact that the PC by and large is a DVD-only medium too - leaving the PS3 - the system with the weakest sales, as the only system using Blu-Ray. Also, nevermind the fact that testing has shown 360 games by and large look BETTER than their PS3 couterparts - at least for now.
If you have a problem with the XBOX 360's hardware not meeting your tastes, that is fine - don't buy it. But at least 12 million people disagree with you, and Rockstar knows that.
- Scott
"as the 360 has 12 million units on the market."
Holy shit! I think we found our Pathetic Fanboy Of The Day!
You'll be taking home a 10 dollars off your next Xbox 360 replacement charge courtesy of the generous folks at Microsoft!
Enjoy!
1) Graphics: umm...given that all reports say that the 360 has a better GPU than the PS3 (and more effective RAM due to a smaller OS) I'd guess that it's the PS3 that's constraining graphics, if anything. The fact that most demos Rockstar has shown of the game have been the 360 version would seem to confirm this theory.
2) Wait...Rockstar was planning to release the PC version on Blu-Ray? WTF? There's no way more than 5% of the PC market has a Blu-Ray drive.
3) Well yes, no harddrive in core was stupid of Microsoft.
"Microsoft is ruining next gen for everyone. No one would care if it was just 360s that were stuck with the crappy version of GTA IV, but Rockstar can't afford to waste money doing two completely different games, one real next gen for the PS3 and PC and a seperate gimped version for the 360." Rockstar can't afford to redoing it better for PC and Ps3? That's a poor excuse since we know they've got 50 million bucks to play with. They won't beef up the graphics for other systems because they'll be busy sipping margaritas on the island they just bought.
I should say, "Please don't feed the trolls," but since I'm currently a PC only gamer, I have no dog in this fight.
First of all: do you have any source links about how the game has been "gimped" claims are useless pile of mush without backbone.
Second: How is this any different then last generation where the Xbox crowd got titles gimped due to the PS2's shortcomings? Games are developed for the lowest common denominator. They're not in it to make the highest quality game possible, they're in it to make money by selling to the largest market possible.
If MS had included HD-DVD and a hard drive standard they might not have sold as well.. and instead we might have been looking at GTA on Wii and getting ported from that. Who's to say their inclusion of different hardware wouldn't have lost them their current market status. Who's to say that if Sony left out the BRD that it would have been a much more popular console and had us seeing GTA made for that and then toned down for the other consoles?
I don't really see this as anything other than business as usual.
Collector's Edition
HA HA, that funny, but I'm that anyone is suprised by this, Sony had Rockstar by the balls with the GTA series, that the games had to be released on the PS2 first and anything else months later. Now that over, and MS decided to do the smart thing and steal one of the PS biggest franchised right out from under them, with this extra content, does anyone here even think that Rockstar gives a krap what system their game sells on, if the console maker is throwing money at them, and the game is sure to sell on it.
If posting a statistic makes me a "fanboy", then so be it.
Yeah, I own a 360. I also own a PSP, a Nintendo DS, a Nintendo Wii, and a Playstation 2. I have no corporate allegiances.
But yeah - shrug off the substance of my post in whatever way allows you to preserve the most dignity. I will sleep fine either way.
- Scott
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
What's so sad about the whole Rockstar being forced to support the crappy 360 is there is absolutely no point to it.
Microsoft sucks as designing and manufacturing consoles.
PC developers hate the 360 due to the retarded graphics system(10 megs EDRAM too small for 720p without messy tiling engine rewrites)
They could have easily included a BluRay drive and shared the same dramatic cost savings Sony is and not had to worry about being shackled with a last gen storage format
They could have just stuck to the pc market and not had to pay anything for GTA and not had to piss off gamers by paying to have the game ruined since the PC doesn't have the same stupid limitations the 360 has
What do gamers have to do to make these clowns up in Redmond get the fuck out of the console market. No one wants them around.
Ahh yes - my mistake, Forgot about the HDD, haha. :D
Though to be fair, that was more of a footnote to the rest of the substance in my post.
- Scott
yea, i got a PS2 for GTA 3, then when it came out on xbox i sold my PS2 and got a halo-box
No developer actually needs that much space, Dual-layer DVD is actually complete overkill when you consider large, immersive games like Zelda:TP, the Metroid Prime series, FF:CC, Price of Persia, etc, etc, etc, were released on disks that held only 1.5GB. Bluray on the PS3 was an enormous mistake, there is absolutely no excuse for a gaming being more than 8GB other than deliberate bloat.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
That makes no sense.
The 360 game disc format is a Dual Layer DVD, 7GB... but honestly, with more and more cinematics moving to the game engine, that's not a limitation. I really don't understand what you are trying to say with your nonsensical quotation of "Storage" that has no basis in reality.
Want to know what's going on here?
Microsoft can't get the exclusive on GTA IV, so they are going for an exclusive on the expansion - a very smart thing to do. It has NOTHING to do with disc capacity, understand? Microsoft will make a mint on the Content downloads, and 360 owners will be happy that they get additional content not available on any other platform.
Content is intended for owners with a hard drive (20GB or 120GB drives) and a broadband Live connection. What's new about this? Sony required a hard drive for some games on the PS2... GTA fanatics will gladly pony up the cash for an Elite or replace their Premium 20GB drive with a 120GB drive.
I honestly can't understand why people bitch about Microsoft's downloadable content charges (or Sony's for that matter), unless the costs are excessive for the user. Reasonably priced Live downloads are good business, and until it gets cracked, it's a very solid model for everybody.
How could you sell out one of, if not THE, most infamous franchises? Is everyone in the video game industry soulless?
But at least Blu-Ray is doing well.
You are reading a sig. Cancel or allow?
they don't seem to be screwing up my enjoyment of my Wii at all.
But yea, I can see where you are coming from. It is a bit surprising that the 360 has many of these limitations. No hard drive, small disks and such, but when it comes to the graphics it was always going to be limited by the 360. There just aren't enough PS3s out there, the Xbox 360 had to be the target platform because it is the one with the most installed consoles. If you want to sell a ton of games, thats the machine you target, at least out of those 2.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Wouldn't it be fairly trivial to build a high-res texture set, and a high-poly model set, use those for the high end and just scale down? What of compression? Even audio could be compressed down on the lower-end. What's there to worry about? Didn't they already do something very similar to this between the PSP and PS2 with the Liberty/Vice City Stories games?
Why are so many people saying that this move will result in a crappier game? It won't. There have always been different versions of the same game, and in this case the hardware/disc space limitations aren't as massive as, say, going from the X-Box classic to the Gamecube. It's relatively trivial to create lower-res textures from high-res ones and to tune down the polycount on a high-poly 3D model, and also relatively trivial to compress audio to (x) codec. So what's the big deal? That's all that's ever been in a GTA game, aside from the basic engine - Audio, 3D models, textures, and scripting.
Long story short, there will be no quality cutback across the board (or SHOULD NOT be) just because the 360 only has a DVD drive by default, or because its core system doesn't have a hard drive. If there IS a quality reduction, then it's solely the fault of Rockstar games. End of story.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
But no PS3?
Fanboy.
You are reading a sig. Cancel or allow?
Sony paid Rockstar for exclusivity for the GTA franchise for years. That kind of thing is not uncommon with console games.
In this case, GTA4 will be available on several platforms (Windows, PS3, 360), and only the downloadable content will be exlusive. And even then, Sony doesn't really have a proper online marketplace to sell downloadable content the way Microsoft does, so the "exclusivity" is pretty much academic.
In any case, this deal is far less exclusive or restrictive than previous deals Rockstar has made... it is actually a step in the right direction.
More likely, what happened was Take Two went to Microsoft and Sony, and said "We're doing GTA4 on both systems, but only one gets downloadable content. So people who buy a system for this game will buy the system that has downloadable content. Shall we start the bids at $10 million?"
Seeing as GTA is a system seller for a lot of people, the argument makes sense. That $50 million will sell more consoles than $50 million in advertising, so they still probably come out ahead.
Sorry, you don't have a clue. The PS3 GPU actually under-performs the Xbox360 GPU.
Can we please refrain from using the term next gen to refer to the current generation of gaming hardware. Thanks
Sure - right after the sales of either the PS3 or 360 can exceed last get hardware (specifically the PS2) for at least three months.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If they couldn't keep the content of the "Hot Coffee" fiasco hidden I'm sure it won't be too difficult for someone to liberate this XBOX 360 only content and slide it over to at least the PC version. Heck, for the chance to mess with an XBOX 360 exclusive I may look into the idea myself.
Microsoft decides to enter console market.
Bungie is well along in developing Halo
Microsoft buys Bungie
Halo becomes an exclusive release on xbox, PC/Mac versions are released later.
Microsoft has already established that they will pay to have exclusive content, it's actually a kinder gentler approach to
pay for exclusive content then it is to buy the company out and lock it in.
my 2 cents but I miss the days when Bungie was doing more than lip service to the oddballs that like gaming on Macs.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
"So now when Microsoft cant convince developers developers developers to only develop for Microsoft platforms, they just pay them to only develop for Microsoft platforms?"
"he who writes the code gets to choose the license, and nobody else gets to complain." Obviously money "convinced" Take Two just fine. You all are just mad that it's Microsoft instead of your favorite.
>Graphics - the PS3 and PC versions are both now gimped down to the weaker 360 graphics hardware
You have no idea what you're talking about. RSX is a crippled piece of tech and is half a generation behind the X360 hardware.
demo released showing the capabilities of the blue-ray disc at full capacity using dragonball z. You could battle anywhere on the planet, fly out of the planet and fly around a solar system consisting of a number of more planets. Microsoft is really slowing down progress here.
Every developer wants more space on the disk so they don't have to factor in space problems - the thing is, they don't NEED that extra space. Games like Oblivion and Crackdown have shown that you don't need HD DVD or BluRay to store a full and immersive world - you just need really good compression, additional hardware threads to decompress off the drive unit, and memory.
Ask a PS3 developer what the biggest performance bottleneck in their game is and they'll either quote the RSX if they're feeling snippy, but most will point at the IO pipe coming off the BluRay disk. Its a little less than 70% of the bandwidth coming off of the 360 DVD drive. All the space dedicated to storing high-textures in the world doesn't add up to anything if you can't get it off the disk. The PS3 is additionally hampered by a divided memory pool, and an abysmally slow bandwidth between main system memory and the dedicated RAM chips on the GPU - in effect you can't use main system memory as a texture cache. Then, to add insult to injury, as if the bandwidth weren't enough, the BluRay drive shipping in the PS3 is horrible random seeks.
The solution - take advantage of some of those Cell hardware threads to decompress textures, which is precisely what Microsoft tells developers to do with the 360. Developers may pretend to want all that extra storage, and one or two of them (Square) might actually need it, but at the end of the day, when those same developers end up going through their performance quality gates, they just end up finding out that everything fit on a regular DVD with room to spare.
This basically means that T2 felt that they couldn't sell more than $50m worth of DLC for the PS3 (we'll assume that every PS3 sale lost will result in one sale for the 360 version of the game)...
I don't really want downloadable content anyway. I just want to get ALL of a game on a disc, I don't want to have to chase down bits and pieces to back up (if even possible) and the hassle of porting it to another system should mine break (if even possible). I don't want to have to wait for the rest of my game, or have to download anything to get the most out of my game. I agree add-ons make sense for something extra, like extra cars and tracks or roster updates in games or whatever, or extra multiplayer levels, but for the primary single player game you shouldn't really have to worry about downloading anything!
Oh shut up fanboy.
Blah,blah,blah...compression, Oblivion, games don't need space...
Just look in the fucking mirror you fucking loser. Do you really want to be the fucking retard who sits in threads for the next five years doing lame attempts at damage control for Microsoft's shitty console?
Just look at the pathetic fucks still doing damage control for the fucking Dreamcast. That is your future.
It's sad that you can't have a measured, reasonable opinion on anything regarding video game consoles, unless you own them all.
Unless you were being facetious, in which case the joke is on me.
- Scott
I also seem to recall the PS2 version of Call of Duty 3 being rather lackluster (and with a TERRIBLE framerate for the graphics being presented), and I blame this on the hardware limitations of the PS2, being the least powerful of the prior-gen consoles, and having only the median in terms of disc space (4.7GB). I would hazard to guess that it was impossible to port directly what was seen on the X-Box (being the most powerful of the three) over to such hardware, as almost all games that were ported from the X-Box looked much uglier. However, I think it's easier to blame Ubisoft on that one. It seems to me, looking at it as an outsider who has never played GRAW in any of its forms, that a PS2 release may never have been in the initial planning phase of development.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
So its all ok that Sony bailed out Square when they got in over there heads with the final fantasy movie, but if MS does the same to help Rockstar (who has had financial problems for over a year) they are evil? It was a smart move for Sony back in 2001 and its a smart move for MS now. Just as Sony saved Square from the possibility of bankrupcy Microsoft has helped assure Take Two and Rockstar of making it through the coming fiscal year so that GTA IV can actually get published.
0 7/03/FF_160_rockstar?currentPage=1
http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/news/20
That gives some insight into what has happened over the past couple years at Take-Two, its an interesting read, and most will agree after reading whats been going on that if anything the Sony fanboys complaining should be thanking MS since its likely that their favorite franchise may not have even made it to the shelf otherwise.
The PS2 had exactly the same disc space as the Xbox - they both supported 4/8 gig dual layer DVDs.
Call of Duty is a pc game, made by a pc developer, every time there is someone trying to make a point about Playstation console hardware power it is inevitably:
* Some pc developer crying about how he is completely lost and none of his x86 or directx code will work
* Some pc game that was dumped on the Playstation by a pc developer who wishes they were off writing directx code making things shiny and not having to deal with a modern graphics system where they have no competence.
Oh yes, and Ubisoft, hahahaha....
The PS2 and Xbox are very close in their overall graphics power. The PS2 has higher fillrate, untextured poly counts, floating point/lighting/transform power. The Xbox is more powerful mostly in the multi-pass texturing area and AA.
Last gen all three consoles were close enough that developers didn't really have to worry about porting between systems except for the GameCube where the disc size and memory caused ports to the system to be gimped.
The range of power between the Wii, the 360, and the PS3 is by far the largest ever for the console market.
Is all of this complaining happening because Microsoft is "sticking users" with the weaker system? The last video game system I bought was a PS2. Most of my friends purchased the Xbox. I can tell you that I sure felt a bit ripped off when the XBox version of the GTA games had better graphics than what I got on my PS2. I didn't freak out and curse Sony for putting out a "weak" system though.
What the hell is "Episodic Content". If its simply some extra missions, this sure doesn't do much for me. GTA's missions aren't exactly what makes the game great. Drive from Point A to Point B and shoot people. Pick up item at Point B and drive to Point C.
Unless this means map additions, new characters, new cars/guns/whatever, then this is just stupid. It's gonna take a lot of downloads to recoup 50 Mil.
//TODO: Insert catchy phrase
"The PS2 and Xbox are very close in their overall graphics power"
PhhhhttHahahahahaha. Go and actually look at some games that are available on both systems, THEN come back and join the conversation, ok?
I don't care what you interpret from the spec numbers, the proof is in the pudding. The Xbox had considerably better graphics than the PS2.
Companies do this by paying the publisher money - not the developers. Developers do have some power, especially successful ones, but the publishers still hold all the keys to the kingdom.
Well, it's obvious what gamers have to do to get "these clowns up in Redmond" out of the gaming market: stop buying their consoles and games. But since that doesn't seem to be happening, you must be wrong that no one wants them around. You seem to be wrong about a lot of things though...
OK, my accounting knowledge stands corrected. I had thought, maybe, that MS and T2 could have entered into an agreement that MS will pay them $X on episode 1 and $X on episode 2 (presumably, from the XBLA revenues generated) and that T2 was deferring those ... but again, I'm no GAAP expert :)
First thing that pops into my head upon seeing this news is a punchline
I understand that end user payments are MS (through XBL) revenue, but clearly MS has to pay T2 a chunk of that, right? I mean, MS could have paid them $50M up front for eps1 and 2, and then when the end users pay for the episodes, it could be deducted from the payments that would be regularly due to T2 for the downloadable content. But again, I'm no GAAP expert, nor an accountant... thanks for the explanation!
Anything involving dragonballz negates any chance of it being progressive.
I understand what deferred revenue means... but I don't see why MS couldn't have agreed to pay T2 up front for the content based on what -normally- would be available to them through the XBLA fee payments...
*twitch* Yes, the 360 has a slightly better graphics card than the PS3; however, the PS3 has Cell, and when you task even a single SPC to assist the graphics card, it becomes much more capable than the 360's card.
Whoohoo, go /. modding system.
Call of Duty 2 was considered by many to be at its finest on the X-Box 360, it being the overall best-looking, best-performing, and best-playing version of the game. The X-Box 360 uses in no way any sort of x86 code, and even its implementation of DirectX is different than that of the PC.
The PlayStation 2 is a modern graphics system now? A system released in 2000? Are you using a 486?
No. You did NOT just say the PS2 was graphically equivalent to the X-Box. No freaking way, not unless you're playing on an old black & white TV from the 50's. When RE4 for the Gamecube looks very distinguishably better than the (very polished) PS2 variant, and when the X-Box is graphically superior (raw power, AA) to that, you're looking at the PS2 being somewhere off in the rhubarb patch, being largely incapable of AA in hardware, actual performance numbers being lower, since multitexturing and shading are something that has been very important in console graphics basically since the PS2's birth. Comparing numbers directly with the X-Box in similar conditions, the X-Box does it faster, at a higher resolution (PS2 supports only 480p as an alternative to 480i, and only with games specifically supporting it, while the X-Box supports not only 480p, but 720p and 1080i), and with AA. It is absolutely inarguable; the X-Box is simply more powerful than the PlayStation 2, even if its game library isn't exactly impressive.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
This is not costing MS $50 million. At most it is costing them a few million that they would have accrued in interest on that amount over 6-12 months.
substitute PS3 for PSP, and that is what i have, and i gotta say, the only thing im playing on ps3 is ps2 games, flow and Resistance..... oh and the duckies, cant forget about the duckies
What an idiot.
I can't imagine what it must like to go through life as brain dead as someone like you. Oh to bring back the days when all the dopey little fanboys argued over were how many bits each system had. Ever since Microsoft made their retarded entry into the console market every clown with a desktop pc suddenly thinks they are an expert on console hardware.
'teh graphics card in teh PS3'. Morons.
What Micro$oft paid for was games, or game updates, or game episodes. The content, if any, of the games remains in the public domain, as does almost all content. The expression (the specific game) is what is owned, and what Micro$oft purchased the rights to.
Why the hell should you curse sony? You were the idiot who bought the system.
Write them.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
(looking up 'facetious' on dictionary.com)
I WAS being facetious. lolpwnd.
You are reading a sig. Cancel or allow?
In two words "matching principle"
What you have described is an accrual, and T2 still would not be able to recognize the revenue right away.
In other news, 640k ought to be enough for anyone
I think it's a bit early to get this excited.
For one, are the graphics really that much better on the PS3? I don't see a ton of difference when I demo the two side by side at the store. And besides, most people (including me) don't have a high def tv to enjoy the full graphical goodness anyhow.
Plus, who ever said that the PC version would be gimped? That wasn't the case with any of the previous PC versions - they could all take advantage of the PC's superior firepower (specifically, they could run at a higher resolution that the console versions). What makes you so sure this time is going to be different?
And finally, if space on the dvd is such a big issue, why not just put the game on 2? Would it really be the end of the world? There's just no way to accomplish that?
My attitude is that Sony messed up the next gen, by making it so expensive that I can't afford it. If GTA4 was PS3 only, then I would probably not play it until 2010, when a PS3 finally dips below the $250 mark.
And they did it so that they could win their format war - betamax all over again. If all the corporations involved could have agreed on a standard (ONE standard), then the cost of the drives would be dropping faster. But instead, we get this BS.
Don't get me wrong... I hate MS too. For totally different reasons. But they're pretty much the good guy, in this particular battle. Maybe not good. More like the lesser of two evils.
All systems from the "next-gen" must outsell all models from the previous generation before we enter a new one. That is my criteria. The PS2 continues to dominate sales.
:-)
Or if you like, a new "next-gen" system must be introduced before you can label the current next-gen systems current gen.
Yes the rules are arbitrary and capricious, but so far I've seen no other suggestions so I am taking liberties with definitions that suit my own way of thinking.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You read my intent pretty clearly, though I would argue that all three systems must outsell the PS2 first... but really that could be haggled over, in any case you are correct that even by the more liberal defintion that allows for just one system to outsell for three months, that condition has not yet been met.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well, for the PC you can always use multiple DVDs and install to the harddrive... I assume this is what G2P was thinking of
Here you go: Xbox 360 is limiting GTA IV, says Rockstar
You PS3 guys sure don't let the facts get in the way of a good flame, huh?
Is this karma, irony, or both? I bought a PS2 for GTA 3, and now I'll buy a 360 for GTA 4 (among other things).
Buy a 360 just for that? Why not upgrade your PC and download GTA IV whenever it comes out?
You just got troll'd!
As I recall, and I played a lot of PC San Andreas, it was gimped (somewhat) by being written for the PS2.
Changing the character's clothes, or shopping for guns, food, whatever was an awful excersize in console texture loading. Also the menus didnt allow mouse input.
and PC Vice City was plagued by PS2 shit like cars that disappear when you turn your field of vision away from them. I don't remember that happening as much in San Andreas.
Agreed. If it's just missions, it's a waste of a lot of money. If it's whole areas, then that's a different kettle of fish.
Despite having the choice, I'll still probably plump for the PS3 version.
Yeah, seriously. Fuck detail. Let's just have three textures for shop fronts and try to recreate a city. We could easily get it to fit on a CD.
A grass texture map doesn't have to be more than 16x16, then we'll recreate central park with it., fuck it, let's skip the texture altogether, and just use a flat colour. I suggest 0x11dd22.
Also, who in the world would EVER want a better/larger selection of music to go with their games? pshaw.
sigh.
I think that unlikely, because that wouldn't be enough to get T2 to make the content 360-only. Also, I think it unlikely that either party would think that the content will produce enough sales to come up to 50 mil, or even 25 mil of royalty payments to T2.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Sony doesn't really have a proper online marketplace to sell downloadable content the way Microsoft does, so the "exclusivity" is pretty much academic.
Yes they do. It's been in place since launch and has actually had no limits on the size of the downloadable content. Microsoft has since upped their limits, but still, Sony has a system in place that is more than suitable.
Regarding the 360 vs. PS3 GPU: this gets repeated a lot, that the PS3 RSX GPU is weaker. And it's a true, but also misleading, thing to say. In terms of vertex shaders, the Xenos has a clear advantage over the RSX - it's six times as fast. Wow! But in pixel shaders, the RSX is king. Power wise, then, the Xenos ends up a bit more powerful (not 6X). But the GPUs are not isolated parts. They're attached to CPUs with a bus that has a communications bandwidth - and there the difference lies. And so the Cell is used to do the vertex work, and then pushes it to the RSX, where all it needs is pixels. The upshot is that they work together, as another poster hinted at pretty brusquely. In the end, it'll be the games that decide. But looking at what's out right now, half a year into the real competition, and claiming one is weaker than another is retarded. We'll know in a year what the story really is, and probably not before then.
Serious question:
Sony and MS sell their consoles at a loss. They plan to make up the loss from game sales.
But... MS pays game developers to create the games.
Where in this model does MS have the opportunity to make money?
Not that it really matters, but evidently 4-layer(100GB) Blu-Ray discs are very manufacturable(there just isn't any reason), and all Blu-Ray drives "should" support discs of at least 8 layers(200GB). I doubt GTA IV will be multi-DVD9, but it is possible.
People keep saying that this is no different than what Sony did, but it's not. Sony's shareholders would revolt if they threw $50 million just to have exclusive downloadable content for one game. It's business tactics like these which contribute to Microsoft's Home Entertainment division to lose billions a year. You guys keep saying "tough, shit, that's how business works," but that's not how business works. This is the whole reason Microsoft is hated in their other markets. Pursuing nonprofitable business ventures just so your logo will be on ever concievable piece of software isn't business as usual - it's a sick obsession by a handful of executives (Ballmer, Gates) to control software and be remembered as the architects of the computer age.
Keep in mind that Nintendo is more vulnerable to being hurt by these kinds of business tactics than Sony. Nintendo has to stay in the black with gaming; they don't have other markets to fall back on. I've always thought that Slashdot would be the first place to see the dangers of the 360 taking the majority of the market, but obviously ethics aren't as important as Halo. (BTW, in case any of you are particularly short sighted, the XBox is part of Microsoft's plan to monopolize television content, which they've been burning billions attempting to do since the late 90's)
Don't worry - anything they release "exclusively" on xbox will most likely be immediately available via P2P, ported by various scenes to insert into the PC version for you to enjoy. Just like the vista "exclusive" Halo2 was almost immediately fully functional on XP via some creative registry/dynamic library patches.
Haha, NO! What are you going to do about it? Thought so.
Amnesty International
The Xbox 360's graphics processing power is superior to that of the PS3's. That kind of pisses all over your fire.
Maybe in future you should base comments on fact, not irrational fanboy loyalties.
Amnesty International
The system I am refering to, the Gamecube, was joking called "Texturezilla" by developers because of it's high texturing bandwidth. Granted, this was in 2001, but still. Have you even seen Resident Evil 4 (though that was a two disk cube game, oh no!)? The game looks great. And the Wii and 360 are both leaps and bounds more powerful than the Cube, with much larger disks. I think you're being too picky.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
Yeah, but us hardcore fans can't wait for a PC version that's gonna come a year later, you insensitive clod! ):