Grand Theft Auto IV delayed from Oct. to fiscal Q2 '08

Saysaysay....DVD to small for GTA4

So where does that leave the 50 mil. for the DL episodes that Microsoft paid 4?

My bet is they realized they could not fit the game on the disc so they have to re-work everything to force it onto a piddly little DVD.

Crippled GTA4....that is what you get RockStar....
Ffffffoooooooooooooo!!!!
choking for space...ooohhhkkkkaaaayyyyy

@tmacairjordan87

Halo 2 set sales records for a day and sold 8 million and there were only 24 million Xbox's and GTA San Andreas sold 12 million overall with over 100 million PS2's sold, so I think they are a little scared of Halo 3 and all the other great games coming out for all the systems especially the 360 since it has the the most systems sold so far.

I'm actually happy with this because I havn't bought a 360 yet so I won't have to be someone that gets the game after everyone else has finished it.

SO....Can anybody tell me how Mercenaries 2 and Naruto:RoaN is coming along?

2 words... THANK GOD

Wow, what did you expect? 3 or so months from planned release date but they not once released an actual ingame screenshot or even an ingame movie, they got nothing done yet, the "planned" release for this year was to just create more hype so more people will be informed about the game

GTA:SA was already pushing the limits of DVD9.

GTAIV's textures are now in HD.

You do the math. It's not difficult.

The fact that a couple trailers shot in a few specific areas were running on the 360 says nothing. The dev kits are running completely off a hard drive, for one thing. The game can be 100GB large if they want it to be at that stage. It's what you do when you need to actually create a working disc image that's the problem.

For another thing, the rest of the world that you didn't see could all still be wireframes at this point. You don't know if it's even textured yet.

I'm going with the DVD9 theory as the most likely. Not that it matters, because next year the game will still come out on both platforms and look basically the same on each.

Considering the size of the game in question, I'm not particularly surprised it was delayed until 2nd quarter - just wondering what exactly held them up.

This fall/winter is too crowded for a game like GTA4 to arrive. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the main culprit for the delay.

More possible reasons for a delay, listed in least-likelyocity.

1-Ryan Brant's probation rather than jail time threw a wrench into the culmination of the game; breaking Ryan Brant out of jail and riding into the sunset on a stallion.
2-Despite best efforts, temperature of fanboys flame war was found to be only enough to cook braised chicken. News of delay was only way found to raise it to levels to safely cook BBQ pork ribs.
C-Not enough duffle bags available for the special edition.

Nice try, however Rockstar have already said on several occasions in the past, that the 360's lack of HDD in the core, is proving to be a major technical challenge.

If anything, the 360 is the system causing the problems, or at least a combination of the 360 core crippling limitations, and the PS3s development ramp.

Take-Two's product line up announced to date for fiscal 2008 includes the following titles:

Title Platform
----------------------------------------------- ----------------------

Beaterator PSP
Bully: Scholarship Edition Xbox 360, Wii
College Hoops 2K8 Xbox 360, PS3, PS2
Grand Theft Auto IV Xbox 360, PS3
Grand Theft Auto IV - Episodic Content Xbox 360
L.A. Noire PS3
Midnight Club: Los Angeles Xbox 360, PS3
Major League Baseball 2K8 Multiple Platforms
NBA 2K9 Multiple Platforms
NHL 2K9 Multiple Platforms
Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution Xbox 360, PS2, DS, Wii
Top Spin 3 Xbox 360, PS3

LA Noire PS3 exclusive!!!??? man and they grab Rockstars next franchise Sony paid mucho yen for this lol

First of all, watch the language guys. It's not like it's the end of the world here. Secondly, this doesn't shock me at all. With Halo 3 coming out just three weeks beforehand and Mario coming out two weeks later, they probably wanted to wait till there were no big hitters so they could have bigger sales.

"Certain elements of development proved to be more time-intensive than expected, especially given the commitment for a simultaneous release on two very different platforms."

THANKS FOR NOTHING, PS3!!! :-|

Ouch! There goes the "perfect storm" of gaming this holiday. This is a real let-down for me. I'm tired of game companies nailing down release dates, then backing out.

Seriously, don't say your game is coming out on x date, or month y, not even quarter z. Game development is too unpredictable, all you end up with is disappointment in your fans.

To add insult to injury, RockStar is the one development team that would stick to their guns on release dates. ARG!!!

Oh well the more polish the better, it's not like we will have any shortage of games this fall.

I think this actually hurts the 360 more. This game would have sold units during the busiest buying part of the year and knowing that the episodic content was coming march 08. This announcement threw a wrench into not only Take Two's but also MS's bottom line by the end of the fiscal year. That is the sound of thousands of 360's that didn't leave the shelf. Now the game won't sell consoles like it would have in the holiday season if release mid 08.

maybe they just realized how awful the game looks

Naw, the technical term is "Halo3-aphobia'.

Right now I'm inconsolable. I bought an Xbox 360 this week for this game (and Halo 3 too) because I was worried it wouldn't look as great on the PS3 (latest example: The Darkness), plus the whole extra content controversy.

F***, f***, f***.

Word

wait a sec the 360needs disc space and it probably will be 4 disc instead of 1 on the 360 are microsoft told them they wanted the window opened up for halo 3 and mass effect sales any way by that time next year ill be playing what,....METAL GEAR SOLID 4the greatest game of of all freaking next gen...this bad news for microsoft which is gonna ose sales to mario gal and smash bros. this holiday so microsoft start strong because you are going to be really fucked this year and how many game sales you make because they are games that look better on ps3 than 360....+ metal gear for the win any way 08 is meta gear year so there is no space for rockstar

Who cares?

It's a sequel that sure to be more of the same only with prettier graphics. Besides, its not as if there won't be other games to play in the mean time.

I personally am happy about this move.

To be honest.....with HALO 3 and MASS EFFECT....

I wasn't about to give GTA IV any real attention until at least January 08 anyway.

why not put it on multiple DVD's? didnt RE4 have to do that on GC?

"Actually you couldn't be more wrong. When Halo 3 comes out and with the price cut in August, it will push more 360s out the door than allowing more time for the PS3 install base to grow. Also, the 360 has exclusive content that the PS3 wont' have. Where have you been? Remember the $50 million dollars that exchanged hands between Microsoft and Take 2? Right now the 360 is outselling the PS3 60% to 40% on amazon. Read, research and analyze before making comments..."

Actually, shut the fuck up. Countless times everyone has seen your Xbox 360 fan-boy, ill-informed comments litter this website. Coming from the United Kingdom, one in every 2 Xbox 360 owners are returning their Xbox 360 console due to the 33% failure rate that is growing day by day, reports BBC. Every friend I know who had a Xbox 360 no longer has one because of the growing failures and hardware errors that this console suffers from and going in to a local GAME or Gamestation outlet sees a mountain of pre-owned Xbox 360 consoles. Even GAME Managers I've taken the liberty to talk to about this for a videogame blog I write have stated they're just not selling any Xbox 360s and have had to send a lot of surplus stock back to Microsoft.

It's quite amazing for someone as mentally-challenged and as fucking stupid as yourself to actually tell someone who has completely the right head about them to read, research and analyse before making comments. Kid, go and fuck yourself. Stupid fucking fanboy.

This is a good thing. I can save up my cash and buy anotehr game for the holidays. They can fix the game up and maybe make the graphics better. This game is going to rock. Cant say so much for the xbox360 though. The controls on gta did horribly on the xbox I remember it was nearly impossible to do a drive by in gta:sa with the xbox contoler. Anyway at least rockstar gave microsoft a break for once and gave them that extra crap. PS3 will probely get it to except the PS3 ones will be free :)

The only problem I have with the "too big for DVD (360)" idea is that I can't believe Take Two would be that massively stupid. Clearly someone (many people) at the company would be very aware of the storage limitations and would have mapped out an allocation of disk space quite some time ago. If space were the problem they should've discovered that long ago. So if in fact they 'ran out of space' then I don't blame the 360, I blame poor planning.

No.