GTA4 Delay Implications

[Sullla]

ChichiriMuyo said:
I think this is actually really good for Sony. The game would have done much better on the 360 this Christmas and having it come a little later may help them if MS's rumored 360 price cut is as small as guessed.

I see a lot of people saying something along these lines, not just ChichiriMuyo. The problem is that this sentiment misses the point; it treats the gaming market as a zero-sum game, which is not the case. Sure, on the small scale of one individual's purchase, you can view the purchase of a 360 or a PS3 as a zero-sum game; the consumer buys one OR the other, not both. But this is a foolish way to view the market in the larger version of things. Microsoft selling fewer units this Christmas is not a victory for Sony, any more than the reverse is true. They're both losers if they move fewer consoles than they otherwise would have done.

A lot of you are posting that this is "good" for the high-end consoles, because at some intederminate date in the spring they will have lower prices via aggressive price-cutting. This is also a silly thing to say; regardless of the actual prices of the 360 and PS3 in Spring 2008, they will both assuredly be at least $300, if not higher. The number of people willing to pay $300+ for a gaming system is much, MUCH lower in March or April than it is in November or December. For this reason, there's no way that this delay "helps" either Microsoft or Sony. Who cares if they double April sales from 100k to 200k units, if that means selling 500k instead of 1000k units this December? See what I mean?

For Grand Theft Auto itself, this news is a total disaster. This will sound like heresy to some on this board, but I think the game will struggle to sell 5 million copies (total, all platforms) if it actually releases in a Spring timeframe. Crazy? Consider this. When GTA3 came out, it was on the console with 1) by far the highest install base, PS2 already in the tens of millions worldwide 2) a low entry price, $200 for GTA3 and lower than that for the sequels 3) releasing right at the optimal time for a strong holiday season in late October/early November 4) future sales were carried by very strong initial sales that spread via word-of-mouth. None of those factors will hold true this generation; we have GTA4 releasing on consoles 1) with small install bases, under 20 million for 360/PS3 combined 2) very high entry prices, at least $300+ for each system 3) a horrible release window, in the slowest sales months of the year 4) little momentum to carry future sales. That last one is a big deal; the more people purchase a game initially, the more non-purchasers see the game (from friends, relatives, whatever) and are motivated to purchase later. In short, I'm expecting another bloodbath of red ink for Take-Two. They've budgeted a game expecting 10 million sales, and I don't think they will even come close to that.

A lot to say, but this really is the biggest gaming announcement in months, and one of the most important delayed games ever.