Rumor: Sony may update PS3 firmware for GTA IV problems

by Justin McElroy on May 13th 2008 12:45PM

It looks like help may be on the way for those of you who are still experiencing some freezing problems with Grand Theft Auto IV on PS3. One user on the official PlayStation forums said he received an email from Take-Two stating the issue was "with the launch edition of the PS3 and this game" and that "the game was checked over and passed as 100% compatible with the current version of the PS3."

As for the fix, the alleged Take-Two staffer reportedly wrote that "Sony are aware of this difference and are looking into producing a new firmware just for the earlier version of the PS3." Wow, a whole new firmware update? For one game? We hope the swelled head doesn't affect Niko's balance when he's bludgeoning and murdering hookers.

Source

Tags: firmware, grand-theft-auto-iv, gta-iv, gtaiv, PS3, rockstar

Reader Comments (58)

Much quicker with the news today Joystiq, what gives?

Heck yeah for one game. This "one game" just so happens to be the bees knees.

I prefer the news like before, every 30 mins.

=(

no kidding eh? The K! always has the news first, but I like the nasty commenters here better.

the reason you don't redesign your console three times in one year.. 18-1..

Sony has the 60 20 80 40 gigs. That's it.

How many revisions of the 360 are there? Core Pro Elite Halo Arcade, plus the actual hardware revisions....

hardware revisions are usually a GOOD thing, and certainly the 360 can throw no stones in that arena.

I guess you don't understand what REDESIGN means... look it up!

jsn

BOTH the PSX and PS2 had 20+ revisions a piece. You do not know what you are talking about. The only difference this generation is that Sony announces the revisions because of a difference in HDD.

Verb 1. redesign - design anew, make a new design for

how are all those Falcon and Jasper chips and HDMI do-dads not redesigns? they werent in there before, now they are = redesign.

the Wii is the only console out that hasnt had any redesigns yet that i know of. PS3, 360, DS, and PSP have all been redesigned in one way or another.

The Wii has had some minor changes to help combat piracy, but nothing like the other two. And jsn is simply clueless as usual.

it's funny to me when someone says something stupid then tries to make it sound like somone else is the stupid one. Yes, jsn, we know what "redesign" means. Do you?

What do people with no internet access do? I don't fall in that category but I feel bad for those who do =(

You mooch off someone else's internet. I let my friends do that all the time.

If you have enough for a PS3, wireless or broadband access shouldn't be too much of an issue...

No friends no internet then huh? Poor guys. But that's nice of you. I had my friend bring over his 360 recently to get the last system update and a few game updates.

well i live in the boondocks and neither Verizon nor Comcast (or anyone for that matter) will run the cables out to my small neighborhood. so we are all stuck with this slow ass satellite internet. its faster than dial-up, but after moving for a time and having Comcast internet, satellite internet is slow as hell. im just lucky i found a satellite ISP without a download threshold. the only game ive found that i can play online on my PS3 is Resistance since apparently everything else needs more bandwidth than i have (damn you Warhawk. basically a waste of $60 now.)

my friend has like a 12GB a month limit. i can knock that out in like 3 days lol. he ran it to 56GB the first month he had it, and when you pass the limit, they cut your speed to next to nothing.

believe it or not, some people still dont have the option for standard broadband.

syrik zero,

well, another option can be to go to a library or something and download the update on a USB drive...

http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/About/SystemUpdate/pc_update.html#update_PC

I know some don't have the option, I have friends here with that same issue. Do you happen to live in NZ? I have friends that with those limits that cut you off and leave you with next to nothing too. And thanks Noshino but it wasn't for me. Just an open question =)

I don't know that I believe there's any significant hardware difference between "launch" PS3s and "current" PS3s that would cause the software issues they're seeing.

it really doesn't matter what you believe, and you don't seem to know what you're talking about...so that lends less credibility to your case

LoL Not sure if anyone else mentioned/noticed it... but the rug draped upon Niko's bedroom wall in Algonquin - is that the same one the Dude "had" in THE BIG LEBOWSKI?

It really tied the room together.

did it not?

Does nobody remember the EXACT SAME THING happening with Assassin's Creed?

Firmware 2.01 implemented 6 days after the launch of Assassin's Creed. -- "System stability during use of some PLAYSTATION 3 format software has been improved."

This is a real problem.. and apparently history is going to keep repeating until Sony divulges this information to developers and start providing PROPER SDKs with all hardware revisions.

Rockstar and Sony testing it out on all of the different models would be a plus too.

That was a similar thing. Except Assassin's Creed worked fine before 2.0. So it was more like Sony broke something and then fixed it in short order.

It's not so much the SDK as the actual device firmware. The devs follow the SDK, but it doesn't always work because Sony's firmware is buggy and needs to be fixed. This is old news if you've ever developed a title for Sony.

GTA IV is fortunate enough to be a AAA+++ title, such that Sony actually CARES. Their official stance is usually "that feature doesn't work? deal with it", or "ok. you found a bug in our code. now get your engineers to fix it, since your game needs it to work." which is just one part of where their reputation of being hostile towards developers comes from. Its because they REALLY REALLY are HUGE dicks sometimes, particularly when their console is flying high.

Sony fixing their own bugs? If the PS3 sees PS2-like success, you can be sure that'll stop happening.

At least it only affects the people who paid $600 for their PS3.

Those are the users that have a very high tolerance for Sony slip-ups.

This isn't confined to Sony. It isn't confined to even gaming. Did you miss the story about the 25 year old bug in BSD this week?

Ask a developer what it was like making their programs work on Windows ME some time.

Sony isn't the only company at fault for not testing all revisions, Microsoft also has had a problem with some games only working correctly on some revisions and not the others. Bully: Scholarship Edition comes to mind.

When I saw the picture, I immediately thought "Sweet! Is BurgerKing is releasing more crappy games like they did before?" Unfortunately, the article has nothing to do with BurgerKing.

I'm glad no one is going into the "PS3 suckz-360 Rulz" b.s. That argument is as old and invalid as Betty Boop.

That's because we're all here together, making fun of YOU

TYPICAL JIM

YOU ARE SO STUPID

Old, yes! Invalid? I think not.

OK, Irrelevant perhaps. Boop boop-de-boop!

Shouldn't the need for a firmware update due to whatever this game does differently have been caught in the testing phase?

yea but you see, unfortunately, that would make sense, so of course that didnt happen.

The problem isn't consistent though. It doesn't happen on all 60 GB PS3s. It may have simply slipped through testing.

Not if they were testing on the newer PS3s - its quite possible that no one thought to try it on an older launch PS3 - and really, without being aware there was a difference, why would they have? Its generally kind of assumed that if you develop for a PS3 the code should run the same on all PS3s, and in this case, it didn't. There really isn't any need to point any fingers at anyone, just get things patched and move on.

They are guaranteed to have used dev kits in their testing process, which do not perfectly mimic production hardware, but also test kits, which are supposed to perfectly mimic production hardware. Unless Sony recalled and replaced test kits (which they might do), then the test kits should all 2-3 months older than the original PS3s, and identical in performance to 1st revision hardware. But this is not the developer's responsibility. The point of a console platform is to have uniform hardware and behavior without hardware-specific testing!

This should have been caught by Sony when it was submitted for approval, as they have 1-2 months of testing that is specifically to catch platform-specific issues.

Wait are they saying the old PS3s have problems?
I have an almost launch 60GB and it had no problem, but i dunno haven't played in a week (finals) so something could have happened.
PS3 is a needy system, if you leave it alone for too long, it'll get lonely and will start having relations with my Xbox or even worst, PS2. Oh god, I cant be in the same room with them anymore.

Can't resist... sure, an unattended PS3 will commence to have relations with a 360 or Wii if it's nearby. However, the PS3 is the "pitcher". :)

hmmm, i have the 60GB PS3 and my copy works fine. i hope this "fix" ain't gonna screw up my game.

yea same here. i havent played a whole whole lot yet cause of finals but i have clocked around 8 hours already and no problems so far.

Same here which is why I cancel past the 1.01 patch. Don't fix what ain't broke for you.

Why is any news item about the PS3 blown way out of proportion? Just yesterday we had a new item about the Bogart Burnout Paradise update being re-issued on Live due to the previous version having issues on the 360 and there were only 12 comments. This problem with the PS3 version of GTA IV only affects a small number of people, but each time it's mentioned we get a bunch of fanboy posts. Almost every PS3 news item is like this. Too many fucktards here.

It's just like the Howard Stern haters in Private Parts. People who DON'T LIKE Sony pay MORE attention than people who do like Sony.
I don't get it either.

1) A typical GTA 4 story gets more traffic than a typical Burnout Paradise story

2) There are hardly any fanboy posts in this story. But I suppose that if you came in here looking to get offended, then you can probably find some way to get offended.

@copa

Think what you want, but it's a dead sure garauntee that if it was the PS3 version of Burnout having issues there would be more than 12 comments.

This doesn't seem terribly likely to me. First of all, GTA IV isn't 100% compatible with anything. All code has bugs. GTA IV is proving this by crashing 360s along with PS3s.

This is just speculation. Even getting info from Take Two means little, as not everyone at a company knows what is going on with the programmers.

And although I had problems with GTA IV, I had the lockup on launch twice in the early days, deleting a few movies off my HDD fixed it each time, and it hasn't recurred since day 2, and I've put in a lot of play since. From what I can tell, the problem just ceases to be a big issue after a while.

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Rumor: Sony may update PS3 firmware for GTA IV problems

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