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Additional Thoughts about Grand Theft Auto IV : Xbox 360 vs PlayStation 3
Having Grand Thefe Auto IV ship on the Xbox 360 on the very same day is major hit to the PlayStation brand. There has been a sizable delay on all previous GTA games on the Xbox platform. Because of this the GTA game series grew to be subconsciously fused to the PlayStation platform. Well that is no longer and in the US since Microsoft has a much larger install base of users on the 360 the Xbox 360 version of GTA has been outselling the PS3 version almost two to one according to the retailers that I've talked to. I am sure the hard NPD sales data will be very interesting to comb over for the post GTA IV launch. It is a pretty safe bet to say that future GTA games with also be cross platform on day one, especially if EA is successful in their semi-hostile take over of Take 2.
I have never hid the fact that I don't own a PS3. I own a PSOne, PlayStation 2 and a Playstation Portable. I only own one Microsoft game system and I remember just a few posts ago I was being accused of being a super pro-Sony fanboy when I reported on reasons behind the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death.
"But according to your gametag you have not finished the game". Oh for Pete's sake. I had to buy this game in the store the day after the midnight launch. You can check my "Off the Boat" Achievement to confirm that. Excuse me for trying to having a life and a job outside of this blog. There were some sites that got early copies and they got to publish exclusive early reviews that were detailed and full of all sorts of sugar coated praise for the game. That is a little ethically troubling. I will play a game until I think I have enough to base my review on. There are also thousands of other reviewers that are not as generous as to hand out their Xbox Live gamertag so you can give them flack about where they are at in the game.
The PS3 version can be hit with a hard lock during the opening intro causing the game to be unplayable after that point and sometimes random locks and crashes rumors to be the connection with the PlayStation Network. The Xbox 360 version has not been hit with any of those issues and this is a pretty big failure for Sony. With major games like this game publishers will send testers, software developers and hardware engineers to special clients like Rockstar to help them polish their games. The 360 version went off without a hitch while the PS3 version launched with some pretty sucky bugs that can cause the game to crash and lock up.
We don't know if the extra downloaded Content is going to be extra weapons, extra mission, extra cars or whole new islands. But as soon as they come out you better bet your sweet hiny that they are going to fly off the virtual shelves and Microsoft is going to toot their horn about them. It is just business but it was a pretty major coup for them to get exclusive extra content for GTA IV for later on this year. Probably right around the holiday shopping rush.
Yeah the PS3 version requires a one time install. If you have a 40 gig PS3 I am not sure how many games you can have install like this before you start to run out of time.There is only a few moments of loading when you start the game on the Xbox 360 but there is no load time in the Xbox 360 version driving around the city and doing most missions.
There are anecdotal internet rumors that there Xbox version does not have as many crowd scenes and the lighting is not the same as the PS3 version but I have not seen anything to complain about. There is also anecdotal internet rumors that the PS3 version does not run at a high native resolution and frame rate as the Xbox 360 version.
All of these are pretty stupid internet fanboy arguments and I am sure that both versions are a blast to play but I am sure that there will be Internet fanboys arguing about their favorite video game platform for a long time. Colecovision Donkey Kong FTW!
Jake at May 6, 2008 
Games
