Take Two is the publisher, not THQ. THQ has no part of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Rockstar North is a development studio under the Take Two umbrella.
–Dave
It’s not a rumor. The newest XBox Nation mag even reports it.
I’m still wondering why Rockstar took so long to circumvent the deal, unless it took them this long to figure out a loophole.
It’s still a rumor until you see a press release. There’s been no official confirmation of any GTA game on any platform other than PC and PS2 to date.
–Dave
“I’m still wondering why Rockstar took so long to circumvent the deal, unless it took them this long to figure out a loophole.”
Normally two companies that make an agreement don’t immediately begin to try to circumvent the agreement. That’s not the spirit behind signing contracts. This story is odd.
So, are we looking for the chicken or the egg?
Mark, yes, it’s odd, but it hasn’t been denied one ounce by Rockstar Games either.
My guess is Rockstar realized they got too ‘little’ from Sony for the exclusivity, not nearly enough of what they supposedly think they’d get from Xbox sales. Imo, if they originally made VC for Xbox ONLY, Xbox would be a big seller, maybe not up to PS2, but close enough (at least in America!).
Even with VC Xbox STILL lacks alot of games that PS2 has, notably the Japanese games.
etc
Maybe Sony’s letting them in exchange for wrapping up exclusivity on the PS3?
Damn it, I meant Take Two. Really.
However, later in the conference, Lapin said that the previous exclusivity deal between Rockstar and Sony would not allow Grand Theft Auto games to appear on any other platforms, but that deal has since been amended.The next Grand Theft Auto game was discussed during the conference, and it was pointed out that the game will be released exclusively for the PlayStation 2 in the second half of 2004.
Taken from gamespot, but all the other sites reported it, then, too.
Ok, this sounds more like Take 2 and Sony talked and came to an agreement that allows Take 2 to make an Xbox version. It doesn’t sound like Take 2 tried to take advantage of the contract.
Are you kidding? VC has sold more copies than there are Xboxes out there, well, practically. Take Two and Rockstar have gotten what is sure to be a considerable stipened from Sony and like 16 million sales for the franchise. Not to bad for a couple years work. They might’ve picked up a million or two Xbox sales if they went multiplatform, but surely some of those would have cannibalized the PS2 sales. So you lose whatever huge chunk Sony gives you, lose a bunch of PS2 sales, have to spend the money to develop an Xbox port and then sell a couple million there.
But going Xbox exclusive? That’d be just retarded. Turn you back on 8 million sales for a couple million? MS isn’t giving away that kind of money.
I don’t know. Look what they paid for Rare.
But going Xbox exclusive? That’d be just retarded. Turn you back on 8 million sales for a couple million? MS isn’t giving away that kind of money.[/quote]
But if it were an Xbox exclusive wouldn’t there be a ton of people buying Xboxes? I am sure the sales numbers wouldn’t slip by much. So that plus the giant amount of cash from MS could actually make them more money.
– Xaroc
Yes, if GTA3 and GTA:VC had come out on XBox exclusively then the playstation 2 wouldn’t have nearly the numbers it has now.
I don’t know. Look what they paid for Rare.[/quote]
Speaking of which, That has been a big dissapointment. When Microsoft first bought rare, everyone was thinking “yeah, Perfect Dark for the Xbox, non-kiddy games from Rare!” So far all they have shown is Conker remix and some kiddy game involving a kid saving his girlfriend. Neither of which look that great.
What’d they pay, like 500 million for Rare? I didn’t understand it at the time, either. Rare is also developing the platformer Kameo, which involves a fairy changing forms to animals and plants to do things (I think).
Well, from what I’ve read, Rare is mainly being tasked with prepping launch titles for Xbox2. It’s still a couple of years away, but now is the time to start development. MS obviously doesn’t have hardware nailed down, but they do have a general idea of how powerful the machine will be and how many polys per second, yadda yadda yadda. And so they can start designing a game now. Plus, if it’s gonna be primarily PC-based like Xbox1 was, there shouldn’t be any nasty surprises hardware-wise.
Well, from what I’ve read, Rare is mainly being tasked with prepping launch titles for Xbox2. It’s still a couple of years away, but now is the time to start development. MS obviously doesn’t have hardware nailed down, but they do have a general idea of how powerful the machine will be and how many polys per second, yadda yadda yadda. And so they can start designing a game now. Plus, if it’s gonna be primarily PC-based like Xbox1 was, there shouldn’t be any nasty surprises hardware-wise.[/quote]
I’ve heard from pretty goshdarn reliable sources that the only difference between Xbox development and Xbox 2 development is that Xbox 2 uses DirectX 9.
I don’t know much about programming, but that sure sounds preferable to learning how to handle that cell-processing beast Sony’s threatening to unleash.
~MJK
It may be preferable, but it almost guarantees that Sony’s machine will be sexier kit and will likely have a lot more potential power. I think there is a very big East vs. West showdown coming to video games in the next couple generations.
–Dave
The PS3 being more difficult to program for probably won’t hurt it much. A few smaller developers might defect, but the big publishers will do what it takes to be on the biggest platform, which will probably be Sony.
Bethesda Studios is working on a Game of Thrones game? If that’s true, it could be amazing.