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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - How MS failed at GTA IV.. again...

How have Microsoft failed at GTAIV?

Its on their console isn't it. Instant non-failure in my opinion.




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Mummelmann said:
But do we know that this content is in fact episodic? I don't think I've heard that before tbh, only the DLC label as far as I know.
Either way, I spend a lot of time browsing and reading up on games and if I don't know about this something is wrong at the MS PR department to be sure, like you said yourself gebx; how on earth will potential customers that are much less informed than us catch on to this?

We don't. We're just assuming it is at this point.

In this instance, it seems MS is not attempting to leverage this towards the informed gamers (the core audience that is the 360's main audience) but towards the mass consumer GTA player that will presumably buy anything GTA related. I don't see this approach as working.

Come roll out time, they will have to display the content on TV if it's supposed to have any significant effect on the average gaming consumer.  



there goes 50 million $$ down the drain



Rath said:
Rath thinks they are probably going to have a massive advertising campaign ala Halo 3 and make everyone think the X360 version is the only version to get, misleading the public in the other direction.

@Stockstar, well this guy, Rath, thinks that you are more likely to see at least three different episodes each worth $15-$20 and each likely to sell a million+. He thinks they are likely to make their $50M back.

This third person stuff really is quite fun.

 I haven't seen ANY GTA IV ads, except for a Gamestop ad for preorders



@EHSTEVE
I've seen GTAIV commercials, I think they were on Comedy Central. They were console neutral. I think Comedy Central is the only channel I've seen the commercials on so far though.



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The Half Life 2 episodes were complete standalone games. If you think you're gonna get that with GTA4 you are dreaming.

The Horse Armour would probably be closer to the reality. It'll still be enough to make PS3 owners envious though.



besides lol, how can the episodic content fit on the 360 hdd? you only control about 60 % of it right? which is like 11gb? most likely the dlc is going to take up a lot of space?



A lot of this has to do with the way games are marketed and sold.

Each episode of Half Life 2 was about $30 separately, which is why it made better sense for Valve to do bundles (which they do for all their properties), eventually leading to the Orange Box, which took a bundle provided on Steam and put it into a retail package which expanded their reach to consumers by a huge amount (even just due to console sales alone).

That made huge sense for consumers who hadn't already bought Half Life 2 and Episode One. Even for those who had bought both, Portal and Episode Two alone would cost the same price as Orange Box if bought separately.

GTA IV is really not the same model as far as I can tell with the limited to non-existent information about these new episodes. I would expect side quest type missions or possible epilogue and prologue type missions. Of course nothing will be standalone since these are console games on hard media with the added content only being available through download.

But for $20 an episode, if that's what the final price is going to be, they will have to provide maybe 5-6 hours of play time each (seems long considering that's how long COD4 takes to finish). Keeping in mind that play time in a sandbox game is not the same as it is in a linear game because a lot of the game time is spent traveling from point A to B and visiting the same locations multiple times.

As far as horse armor type add on content, I'm pretty sure we can expect to see that for the PS3, with any luck for PS3 supporters, maybe a bit more than that in the future.



CaptainPrefrences said:
besides lol, how can the episodic content fit on the 360 hdd? you only control about 60 % of it right? which is like 11gb? most likely the dlc is going to take up a lot of space?

Space wise, keep in mind that the majority of the resources being used for these episodes will likely be on the retail game disc. Some may possibly even be locked (not accessed during the regular game). All additional resources will obviously have to be downloaded, but I'll be surprised if they end up totalling in the range of 5-6GB. 1-2GB seems a bit more plausible. 

I'm not expecting to see entire new islands or city districts, not to say that it couldn't be done.



Microsoft should definitely come out and tell people a lot more about the episodic content.