Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter explains that the reason for GTA's untimely appearance is due to Rockstar's lack of experience with the PS3: "We think it is likely that 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." It's true that Rockstar has more experience with the Xbox 360 hardware, thanks to their Table Tennis game. All footage of the game we've seen so far was running on Xbox tech, which hints at possible negligence when developing the PS3 version. Even if the Xbox 360 version was further along in development, it appears that Take-Two simply might not have had any choice but to delay both versions of the game: "We think it is also likely that Take-Two had a contractual commitment to Sony that it would not favor competitor Microsoft by launching the Xbox 360 version of GTA IV prior to launching the PS3 version, and believe that any delay of the PS3 version necessitated a delay of the Xbox 360 version."
This is Rockstar's first attempt at making a multi-platform "next gen" game. A game as large as GTA IV is undoubtedly a beast to program, and Rockstar may have failed to recognize the added work of developing for two platforms simultaneously. As N'Gai Croal from Newsweek points out, "It wouldn't surprise us if Rockstar and Take-Two had already all-but-delayed the PS3 version to triage the Xbox 360 version for this holiday, only to have their hands forced when, at yesterday's product review, it became clear to both sides that even the 360 version could not be completed this year to Rockstar's exacting standards."
Regardless of what the "real" reason for the delay is, we're glad to see that Rockstar has more time to work on both the 360 and PS3 versions of the game. We certainly want the game to be as polished as it can be.
Read - Michael Pachter, Wedbush Morgan Securities
Read - N'Gai Croal, Newsweek
