Slashdot Mirror
PS3 Issues Caused GTA IV Delay?
Dr. Eggman writes "According to statements made by Michael Pachter on Gamasutra, 'The Rockstar team had difficulty in building an exceptionally complicated game for the PS3, and failed to recognize how far away from completion the game truly was until recently.' The article goes on to describe an agreement between Rockstar and Sony not to favor the 360 by releasing their version first, necessitating the delay on the 360 as well. Pachter's comments are interesting, because all Take-Two has been willing to say is that 'technological issues' were causing the hold-up. "
So far the demos have been utter shit from everyone who has seen them - horrendous framerate problems, terrible geometry popin, and a variety of other problems.
That would indicate that Rockstar is really struggling to support the much weaker 360 hardware compared to the PS3 and PC. They are probably at the very limit of what they can stream from the 360's DVD drive and are still having huge popin problems.
There are increasing rumors that Microsoft is about to abandon the Core and let game companies require a harddrive. The timing of the GTA IV 360 problems from Rockstar and the change of policy from Microsoft probably are related with Rockstar telling Microsoft they can't get anything remotely next gen out the 360 right now.
Just look at the problems other developers are having with the 360's DVD drive with PGR4.
And look at how bad the graphics are on the big 360 first party games like Forza 2 and Halo 3.
One look at a game like Lair that absolutely destroys what we've seen from GTA IV so far makes it absurd to try to spin the GTA IV 360 problems as the PS3's fault.
Sony has their next gen shit together, Microsoft doesn't appear to even where the next gen race starts.