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Games Entertainment

GTAIV Dated to April 29th 61

Joystiq is reporting that Take-Two has nailed down a final release date for Grand Theft Auto IV . When they delayed the game last year, they said they were aiming for a February to April target, and they're making it ... barely. "If you've checked out the multitude of previews that dropped this week, you'd know that game is looking really, really awesome, so we're counting on Rockstar to hit its date this time around. What more is there to say, really? GTA IV. April 29."
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GTAIV Dated to April 29th

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  • The site's blocked from where I am right now, so I can't rtfa. Does it mention when the PC release will be? Is it going to be a year later like the last three GTA games?
    • Can you beat a karma whore to death and get your money back? It does not look good for PC gamers.... Next-generation Console Debut of the Grand Theft Auto Franchise Set for April 29, 2008 New York, NY - January 24, 2008 - Rockstar Games, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO), is proud to announce the release date for Grand Theft Auto IV, the new title in the genre-defining Grand Theft Auto franchise. Developed by Rockstar North, Grand Theft Auto IV will be simultaneously
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by elh_inny ( 557966 )
        In addition to what you said:
        1. PC Ports of the games are not only delayed, but also suffer in performance. This has been most visible with 1st gen XBOX with has been a plain PC under the hood and the Celeron 733 powering it, yet the PC ports of XBOX games required 1GHz + processors and much more RAM. Current example is Assasin's Creed which recommends 3GB of RAM!!! No console has that much, yet it work smoothly somehow...
        2. They blame piracy and poor sales, but usually PC sales add profits to what's been m
        • Re:Karma Whoring (Score:5, Insightful)

          by steveo777 ( 183629 ) on Thursday January 24, 2008 @11:01AM (#22168016) Homepage Journal
          In regards to your being upset that you need a computer of remarkable power increase for games... Even if the original XBox was just a relatively slow computer with a nice graphics card, it still had special controllers and dedicated hardware. Granted, it didn't have all the bells and whistles a console with that much power should have, it worked.

          Dedicated hardware, drivers, and optimized code make a huge difference when compared with PC games. Windows is designed to work on almost anything, and with almost anything. So you have to remember that Windows needs a LOT of resources just for it's own fat code. Also the game has to be designed to plug into all that. Think about all the 'wasted' hardware. The system bus is completely impractical for gaming because it is designed to take care of much, much more than it needs to do.

          Just saying. The closest I come to being a computer engineer is being able to put them together and troubleshoot pre-Vista Windows... so, yeah.

          • I think you're putting too much emphasis on the impact Windows itself has on PC gaming. DirectX is pretty modular in it's memory usage such that only components needed get loaded into memory. Those myriad of drivers and alternative hardware schemes simply don't get loaded if they're not needed.

            For the GP example, Assassin's Creed. The XBox 360 has 512 MB of memory. All of a sudden you need 3 GB (SIX times as much) on a PC? The CPU requirements are equally crazy. Methinks that the latest lazy-port fashion is
            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              Another thing to remember is that consoles have relatively poor graphics compared to a PC. 480p is roughly 640x480, imagine running a PC game at that resolution, it'd be awful. Even new gen games like Halo 3 have the much angered not quite 720p resolution. 1300x720 is still not the 1900x1600 or even 1280x1024 that PC games demand. It takes a lot more to push that many more pixels.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by powerlord ( 28156 )

          3. Top end PCs clearly have superior power and better input/output options.

          And Top end PCs cost how much?

          As PCs have advanced to the latest generation, the hardware is ridiculously overpowered for what the majority of users do (Word processing, Spread sheets, email, web surfing, the occasional video).

          That means that, barring mal-ware infection of the OS, most people can use a given system for longer than the old "Its good for two years". Most systems, unless you need to play the latest games, can easily la

        • This has been most visible with 1st gen XBOX with has been a plain PC under the hood and the Celeron 733 powering it, yet the PC ports of XBOX games required 1GHz + processors and much more RAM.
          That full featured OS you're running has to fit somewhere. You can't really compare the two just because the underlying hardware is similar, unless you want your PC to be about as useless as an XBox.
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          Consoles have the advantage for publishers in the sense that they have much more control over how you use the content, they can extra for any mods or add-ons, but the net result is dumber users who play on their TV but don't know much about technology :(

          Console games also typically sell more copies. At least that's what I was told when a company I worked for worked with a game company. This was a few years ago, but they said that a 'success' was 200k copies on a PC and 500k copies on a console. I'm not sure how true those specific numbers are today, but the console market has been quite successful.

        • Consoles have the advantage for publishers in the sense that they have much more control over how you use the content, they can extra for any mods or add-ons...

          And that is exactly why I, for one, refuse to buy consoles. The most recent one I bought was a Sega Genesis/CD/32x.

        • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          1. PC Ports of the games are not only delayed, but also suffer in performance. This has been most visible with 1st gen XBOX with has been a plain PC under the hood and the Celeron 733 powering it, yet the PC ports of XBOX games required 1GHz + processors and much more RAM. Current example is Assasin's Creed which recommends 3GB of RAM!!! No console has that much, yet it work smoothly somehow...

          It's a lot easier (and effective) to optimize software when you know exactly what kind of hardware it is running on (which is the case with consoles). On PC's the situation isn't so rosy.

          Though Assasin's Creed recommending 3GB when the consoles only have 512Mb is especially crazy, and I expect the result of just a lazy port.

        • Re:Karma Whoring (Score:5, Insightful)

          by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Thursday January 24, 2008 @01:05PM (#22170100)
          > This has been most visible with 1st gen XBOX with has been a plain PC under the hood and the Celeron 733 powering it, yet the PC ports of XBOX games required 1GHz + processors and much more RAM.

          There are a few things you are forgetting about the original XBOX

          - it had a Geforce 3.5 and even if games used pixel shaders, most games only used a 640x480 res. Given the old tradeoff between flexibility and speed, the console's strength is speed.
          - it only had 64 megs of ram, so even with compressed textures, they were low res
          - it ran a stripped down NT kernel that didn't chew up tons of megabytes like the desktop version does
          - it had a small & fast directX implementation
        • PC's have superior power? Clearly? Sounds like you just proved they do not.

          You cannot compare systems solely on ram and processor speed in mhz. There's more to it, and obviously a PS3 with .5 gigs ram does a hell of a lot better than the equivalent computer. The PC architecture is excellent for flexibility and terrible for specific applications.

          I like PCs too, but we should just expect a PC to take a lot more Ram and processor to do a task than a system geared very specifically to a task.

          Also, what inpu
      • by dintech ( 998802 )
        They're probably waiting to get some decent sales under their belt before releasing a moddable, 'hot-coffeeable' version.
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
        What? No Wii Version? Nothing like beating a hooker by actually swinging the controller.
    • The official Take 2 site says the April 29 release will be for PS3 and Xbox360. No mention of a PC release. Can't get any info off the official game site because their fancy Flash interfaces breaks on my browser. Doesn't look like there's much there anyways.
    • The site's blocked from where I am right now, so I can't rtfa. Does it mention when the PC release will be? Is it going to be a year later like the last three GTA games?
      Try https://www.vtunnel.com/ [vtunnel.com], if it's not blocked yet ;)
  • ...just to drive everyone insane. ;-)
  • And a video gamer's best friend, Jack Thompson, files suit against Take Two, Walmart, Microsoft, Sony, Best Buy, and cousin Skippy on April 30th.
  • Ah well - game looks awesome though
    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      Does it? It's not a revolution above GTA3, it's just GTA3 with much better graphics. I'm not sure this game will be as much fun as San Andreas, a very open and versatile game.

      I'm not sure that Rockstar has ever had truly well crafted games, though they always have interesting ideas and content.

      I hope this GTA4 is as good as they say it is. I just get the impression it's not.
  • What more is there to say, really? GTA IV. April 29, 2046
  • Sorry for the offtopic, but what does this tag mean? Isn't it necessary for more than one person to use the same tag for it to show up? So I'm guessing it's not a typo.
  • How about GTA:FPS? The GTA games are great, but 3rd person auto-aim battling sucks. Tried GTA:SA:MP? PVP is horrid.
    • Try the PC version then. I usually hate third person view too, but GTA is one of the few games that does it right (and you can switch to 1st person while driving or shooting anyway - in San Andreas it was more of an over the shoulder view than 1st person though).
  • This game will be pushed back into the Fall. No one releases a blockbuster like this in April.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Emetophobe ( 878584 )
      Where's the rule that says a game can't be released in April? Like you said, it's a blockbuster. A game like GTA IV will sell 10+ million copies (even in April).

      And it was already delayed 6 months (it was originally going to be released in October 2007). October 2007 + 6 month delay = April 2008. My only hope is that it doesn't get delayed again.
  • I for one am looking forward, after April 29th, to all the camera crews here in Seattle for the upcoming GTA: Emerald City.

    And I'm jacking the copter from on top of Seattle Grace (KOMO TV) and buzzing the crab on top of the Space Needle!

    Might even shoot me some interns ... well, except the cute ones ...

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