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Forums - Gaming - PS3 complications caused GTAIV delay - analyst

I wonder if he's making these statements based on rumors, talking to an insider, or just an opinion?  Has he ever made statements like this before (usually he makes predictions about where the market is heading)?  If they're false then Take-Two will likely make a statement correcting him.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=27326

"Analyst Michael Pachter believes Rockstar has delayed the release of Grand Theft Auto IV because it is struggling with development on the PlayStation 3.

And the Xbox 360 version of the game has suffered at least a six month delay as a result, due to contractual obligations that will have prevented the publisher from releasing the game first on Microsoft's machine, says the analyst.

"We think it is likely that the Rockstar team had difficulty in building an exceptionally complicated game for the PS3, and failed to recognise how far away from completion the game truly was until recently," said Pachter.

"We think it is also likely that Take-Two had a contractual commitment to Sony that it would not favour competitor Microsoft by launching the Xbox 360 version of GTA IV prior to launching the PS3 version, and believe that any delay of the PS3 version necessitated a delay of the Xbox 360 version," he added.

This failure to recognise development problems could dent investor confidence in the publisher, even after it has taken steps to improve the green light process for software development.

"Take-Two management stumbled badly for the first time during their tenure," commented Pachter.

"While the delay of GTA IV was clearly not the fault of new management, we believe that it should have been better understood several months ago, and should have been communicated to investors much earlier than today.

"The company has begun an initiative to improve the green light process for new projects, but given the delays of Manhunt and GTA, its process for monitoring projects under development appears to be a failure," he said."

 



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They should have built the game straight up on the ps3 version first not port it, this always causes the games to look better on the 360,and hard development. It sucks though that 360 owners have to wait becuase of sony. I keep thinking why sony idioticly put 256mb ram on two chips instead of 512mb, we would be seeing huge games graphicly.



 

mM

No idea where het gets the idea, but it's possible. We know some 3rd party developers have been running into problems on the PS3 (Madden only runs at 30fps on the PS3, but at 60fps on the 360), and as far as i've read, the demo's given by Rockstar so far have been on debug 360s.



andamanen said:
No idea where het gets the idea, but it's possible. We know some 3rd party developers have been running into problems on the PS3 (Madden only runs at 30fps on the PS3, but at 60fps on the 360), and as far as i've read, the demo's given by Rockstar so far have been on debug 360s.

How many times do people have to say this, sony says its running at 60fps and EA confirmed it weeks ago.



 

mM

This is a load of crap in my opinion. Its not based on any fact, just some thoughts from someone who has proven he is wrong time and time again.

Its just as likely the PS3 version is running well, but the 360 version is suffering in terms of frame rate (etc..).

Their bug database probably has 5000+ bugs in it, and the game simply needs more time to be completed to an acceptable level of quality. God knows GTA3 (all 3 games) were still incredibly buggy as is.

 



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I think I agree with him. If the problem was with PS3 why couldn't they release it for the Xbox and get the holiday period effect? Sony bviously put a lot of money on them...



Lets not forget what industry analyst is saying this.

We all know this guy is wong nearly 100% of the time. I'm not saying it's not possibly the PS3 version isn't delayed. Just saying, I don't trust anything this guy says. He gives not a single source to confirm anything.



Yes

Before reading the article, let me just get this out:

Michael Pachter is an idiot who has changes his mind every few days and doesn't even seem to realize it.

OK, now I can read it.

 



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shams said:

This is a load of crap in my opinion. Its not based on any fact, just some thoughts from someone who has proven he is wrong time and time again.

Its just as likely the PS3 version is running well, but the 360 version is suffering in terms of frame rate (etc..).

Their bug database probably has 5000+ bugs in it, and the game simply needs more time to be completed to an acceptable level of quality. God knows GTA3 (all 3 games) were still incredibly buggy as is.

 


I agree.  Except it could be true.  However if it is Patcher doesn't know it.  He's just coming up with a plausable reason and hoping he's right.  Because if your an analyst people don't throw it back in your face much because being an analyst isn't an exact science.  It is annoying when people are hacks however and forgo all the science.



Well to be fair Epic had problems with the Unreal Engine 3 on the PS3 and it caused a delay of several games for the PS3 as a result. Has there ever been a multi-platform game that was delayed for the 360 because of framerate issues (which seem to be the reason for GTAIV's delay)?

The only multi-platform games I can think of that were delayed for the 360 and not the PS3 are Unreal Tournament 3 and Haze and in those cases one is due to Epic and Microsoft not coming together to solve user created content issues and the other seems to be to give Haze a timed exclusive and so that it didn't come out on the same console and around the same time as Halo.