Grand Theft Auto IV Special Edition

During a late afternoon conference call on Thursday for analysts and media, Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said that he didn't see much benefit in discussing the specific technical issues that forced he and Rockstar to delay Grand Theft Auto IV until Spring 2008, and he remained true to his word. But that doesn't mean that the staff of Level Up can't engage in some informed speculation about what may have taken place.

Until earlier this week, when a source informed us that Microsoft had sent a shock team of engineers to help Rockstar complete the game, much of the gossip surrounding problems with GTA IV centered around the Playstation 3 version. Rockstar has been pretty quiet about that SKU; the game has only been demonstrated to media running on the Xbox 360; the GTA IV trailer wasn't even shown during Sony's E3 press conference, ostensibly because Rockstar never responded to requests for footage from Sony PR. Throw that into the mix with all of the non-Rockstar scuttlebutt--several developers have said that it's difficult to develop for PS3; porting from Xbox 360 to PS3 is said to be harder than the other way around; yet many developers are choosing to lead on Xbox 360 because of its larger installed base, resulting in PS3 versions of games shipping weeks after the Xbox 360 SKU has already gone out the door--and the stage was set for an October surprise: GTA IV becoming a de facto Xbox 360 exclusive. Instead, both versions have been pushed back to next year. What happened?

We believe that Rockstar is having difficulty with both versions of the game, not just the PS3. GTA IV executive Sam Houser basically said as much in the press release, "The game is huge and is pushing the hardware platforms to their absolute limits. The top engineers from Sony and Microsoft are working closely with the team in Edinburgh right now, helping us to fully leverage the power of both platforms." That was echoed by Zelnick on the conference call, who said, " There are technical challenges across the board on both PS3 and 360." If Rockstar could have completed the 360 version in time for its previously scheduled October release, it would have done so. Why?

A press release from Take-Two Interactive just crossed the wires, revealing that Rockstar Games' much anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV will no longer ship in October as previously planned. It's now expected to ship sometime next spring. We'd heard rumblings of development problems on the game--more specifically, that Microsoft had sent a SWAT team of developers to assist Rockstar in getting the game shipped on time, much as it did last year for Gears of War--and recent previews from the enthusiast press pointed out significant problems with the game's framerate.

Nevertheless, Rockstar has delivered its Grand Theft Auto games more or less like clockwork, making today's announcement something of a shock. But given executive producer Sam Houser's statement in the release that "The top engineers from Sony and Microsoft are working closely with the team in Edinburgh right now, helping us to fully leverage the power of both platforms," it would appear that the rumors are true. Hopefully Rockstar will use the extra time to include the criminally neglected Staten Island, better known to Wu-Tang Clan fans as Shaolin.

The bad news doesn't stop there, however. Take-Two also doesn't expect to ship Manhunt 2--which is at present effectively banned thanks to its Adults Only rating--during its current fiscal year. It will be interesting to see which publishers move their games out of the November crunch and into October now that the neutron bomb that is Grand Theft Auto IV will no longer be dropped in 2007. Looking at the winners and losers in all of this, the biggest winners are rival third-party publishers (less competition) and Nintendo (more reason for fence-sitters to buy a Wii and hold off on the more expensive 360 and PS3, while the biggest losers are Take-Two (much, much, much less revenue) and Microsoft (the one-two punch is down to just one.) As for Sony, this would appear to be a push: while an arrow has been temporarily removed from Microsoft's quiver during the crucial holiday season, the PS3 would nevertheless have benefited from longtime GTA fans buying PS3s to play the game.

For more excerpts of the release, click on the link below.

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