As GTA IV enters its extensive beta-testing period on 360 and PS3, the question remains exactly when it will be released on PC.
Okay, sure, they’ve yet to announce it for PC, but tradition dictates that it should be with us within the next year. And if that tradition continues, it will be a superior version designed for considerably more handsome people. Well, we’ve been down to the rumour mill, despite hazardous safety conditions and a lack of protective eyewear, and heard that it might be in November.
According to legendary breakfast TV presenter* Chris Evans (via GameRush), a German site is reporting November 30th for a PC release.
How true is this? Well, I’ll decide for the world. It’s 100% true. Now that’s set in stone, Rockstar has an obligation to meet that date or lose significant investment, and as such Take-Two will immediately be bought by EA. It’s serious Rockstar, very serious.
*This might be a lie.
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Chris Evans: Spotted that update on the German site just a moment ago. They’re just making things up, right?
Who knows, CVG got a no comment from R* which in my mind is a ‘oh crap, its out…lets no comment until we are ready to announce’
Now that looks pretty promising.
Kieron below: At least nobody’s denying anything. Phew.
Yeah. I got a no comment on the quote saying it wouldn’t be coming too.
But I’ve since noted the guy who was quoted isn’t actually in the game’s credits. Do the maths.
KG
I’ve got a feeling this will be a STEAM exclusive if and when this comes to PC given the other GTA games available. Take 2 would be throwing away money if they didn’t. Even after buying the 360 version, I would easily buy this again for my lappy. I want my GTA for the road.
Response (Hannah)
30/04/2008 06.17 AM
Hello,
Unfortunately GTA IV is currently only being released on the PS3 and the Xbox 360. We have not information regarding a PC release.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Kind Regards
2K Games Technical Support
Customer (. Smood)
29/04/2008 10.11 PM
A recent article below stated the Rockstar developer
Nick Hersh stated a GTA4 PC version is unlikely. Is
this true? Can anyone at Rockstar comment on this?
The source is here:
http://whatifgaming.com/gta-iv-for-pc-very-doubtful
Sounds like a no comment to me tbh, plenty of other games to play anyway, and even if it later turns out that it won’t be getting a PC release? By then the console and game will be cheaper to buy, so its still a win-win merely by being patient – imho.
Though I’m somewhat confused as to the signature saying “2K Games Technical Support” – Just saying, is all.
Despite it’s popularity most 3rd party publishers haven’t really made Steam that attractive a purchasing option yet for first release software, and the different geographical pricing some of them have implemented is pretty questionable. Bioshock is even now still retailing on Steam at a much higher price than you can buy it for off the shelf in Tesco’s for example. Steams a more attractive option for back catalog and independent games I feel.
Personally I’d love to have GTA IV on Steam (I have the others for convenience), but at the same time the GTA packaging is generally pretty good and you do get the fold out map ;)
@ Larington
2k are the games publishers. I’d envisage Rockstar have shut up shop for a couple of weeks to kick back after the push. I wouldn’t expect anyones going to be breaking radio silence over a PC release quite yet (that’s a paying website/magazine exclusive), but given as Kieron says Nick Hersh doesn’t exist on the games credits it’s highly debatable as to whether he even exists.
I don’t think they’ll bother. They’ll be busy enough keeping online stuff and possible console patches in check, and given how much of the market will have already bought it on console, and then how much of the remaining PC market will just end up pirating it, it probably just isn’t worth it.
Sad but (possibly) true. See the recent Crysis post…
Does this make Chris Evans one of the bootyfull people?
A couple online stores are reporting October 30th.
And who the bliddy hell is “Nick Hersh”? He ain’t a producer at R*, thats for sure.
And the game was devv’ed on PC, before it ever even ran on a 360. So do the maths there people.
Fuck Usman stupid fuck. He posts this stupidness about some Nick Hersh and then when you ask him to back it up he doesn’t say anything. Fucking scum bag piece of fucking shit. Fuck his family.
Could you put in a story, while you’re at it? That would be lovely.
Attention: I got my mail from Rockstar:
Hello Nikola,
A future release for GTA IV on the PC is definitely a possibility, however once this is confirmed we will let you know.
The guy who answered is Colin.
Oh and the mail I sent to was usa@rockstarsupport.com
and I got the mail from take2games_en5@mailuk.custhelp.com
With all the hype and publicity following the release.. I am going insane with console envy. Waiting till Nov will be difficult. The anticipation may actually pressure me to purchase a console. . . PC gamers need a GTA support group quickly!
I have no idea what to believe. On the one hand, all the main GTA series entries have come to PC, and it’d certainly make them money if they did do a port. On the other, they haven’t done a PC release of any of their games since (as Kieron points out) Hot Coffee. Some of that’s not entirely surprising – the PSP GTAs weren’t originally intended to come to any other platform, for example. But then again, Manhunt came to PC, and Manhunt 2? Not so much.
Myself, I figure I’ll do my best to finish the GTAs I own (Vice City, San Andreas, LCS, VCS) and the similar games I own (Saints Row, for one), and then if I’m still craving open-world crime drama there’ll either be a PC release by then or I’ll spring for the 360 version that will hopefully have gotten a tad bit cheaper in the meantime.
@Essell
Porting the game from 360 to PC is no hardship, given the platforms use shared protocols and plenty of other developers have done so and sold well. It’s not the kind of monumental task a lot of people make out, or one that’s going to consume the entire efforts of your company to achieve, and precluding you for doing other things.
Even with the spectre of piracy (which would definitely be a lesser issue if Rockstar utilize Valves Steamworks toolset to combat 0 day piracy) a PC release is still going to sell handsomely enough in terms of numbers to make it an attractive proposition (see my earlier posts on the subject).
As for Crysis, sure it did get pirated a lot, but they ultimately sold over a million units retail in the end and that’s nothing to be sniffed at, esp given how high the system specs were for the game, it was never going to sell as monumentally as the Sims, and aside from the awesome game engine it just wasn’t that good a game at the end of the day (I got bored halfway through the demo tbh). Also it’s not that they haven’t said they won’t develop for the PC anymore, more that they won’t do so exclusively. Again though there are tools freely available now that can help combat 0 day piracy (leaked before retail release), which is where the majority of sales are lost traditionally.
Warning: Tiresome Hot Coffee post!
The reason HC cost them money — rather than, if anything, making them money, like it otherwise would — was because of their own folly — the content of HC wasn’t user-created, it was Rockstar-created, and their not disclosing it to censors/ratings boards is what got them (rather unfairly, to my mind, considering that no amount of conventional gameplay could uncover it, but that’s moot now) in the shit, with the bannings and the rereleases and the resubmissions and so on and so on. The lesson for Rockstar from Hot Coffee is not, “don’t release games for the PC because modders might make naighty things with it” (because that isn’t how it happened), it’s “interrogate your code more thoroughly before you put it out” — modders didn’t create Hot Coffee, they uncovered it, and if they had created it from whole cloth (or if they create a fullblown “GTA IV TENTACLE RAPE TOTAL CONVERSION!!!”), any resultant hubbub would have just slightly more media traction than an Elvis sighting, and all the legal traction of a man suing the ocean.
Of course, they may be so ignorant of their own rights that they took the former moral, but their lawyers would have to be spectacularly lazy to let them fiscally punch themselves in the face for no reason like that (I have absolutely no idea how much an adequate — or, more likely, inadequate — PC port costs to make, but surely it wouldn’t come close to outstripping the revenue that comes of opening the biggest name in stuff-other-than-Warcraft gaming to a platform which can still muster up a million or two sales when the gamers are really stoked? And they are really stoked…)
. Do you see Valve and their lawyers quaking under a tin hat and a bible because of the Alyx Vance nude skin? Unless Rockstar are stupid enough to have coded another simulated sex minigame into GTA4, abandoned it, left it in the code, and neglected to mention it to the BBFC, OFLC, ESRB and whoever else (which would show a pretty spectacular sense of self-destructive black humour… behold, Rockstar North the Kamikaze Game Studio!), Rockstar have zilch to fear from modders.
Apparently GTA IV cost about $100 million to make (which is even more than I imagined tbh):-
http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?story=52464
Which given the need to recoup as much profit as possible makes a PC release this year pretty much inevitable.
Kadayi: The 360 and PS3 releases, however, should shorten the wait for profit to, say, a month at most.
Kadayi: “Which given the need to recoup as much profit as possible makes a PC release this year pretty much inevitable.”
I’m not sure “recoup profit” makes sense? But I get what you’re saying. They need to break even then maximize profits with that sort of development cost. I agree that it seems highly unlikely they would forgo PC, although that is what I want after all :)
Yes, but this is GTA. Look at all the gaming-oriented bits of the internet dropping their panties, quivering. Look at all the copies flying off the shelves.
It’s no comparison.
I caved and bought a 360 200 quid is cheaper than a decent graphics card people.. no contest am afraid.
Abyssuk:
With my birthday money this year, I bought a new 64 dual processor, a 8600 GTS graphics card, a new motherboard, a new power supply, and another gig of RAM. It came to 305 quid. I’m will to bet the graphics card was less than 200 quid.
Oh, and I paid for service too.
@cqdemal
$200 million worth of unit sales since the initial launch, doesn’t translate to $200 million for Rockstar themselves. retailers will have swallowed up at least half of that, the publishers Take 2 probably another third. Given Microsofts $50 million dollar investment (for exclusive DLC they still have to work upon), they might be in for a slice of pie as well on the 360 release, and finally let’s not forget the tax man will want his share. It is going to take a good few weeks more and a lot more console sales before Rockstar actually break even on their investment, let alone make money upon. $100 million is an unprecedented amount of money to spend on development (that’s 2.5 times the development costs of Half life 2 as a comparison). GTA:SA sold 21.5 million unit sales over 4 years across all platforms, which was a 4 million sales improvement on what GTA:VC sold. GTAIV will certainly top those 2, but it’s not going to happen overnight, nor is the current generation console market that expansive. Halo 3 which was considered a ‘must have’ has sold 8.1 million units on 360 worldwide, and that had a far more sales friendly rating than GTA IV has.
@Lh’owon
What I meant to say was ‘recoup their investment’ (it was a pretty late post), but you get the gist of it.
Kadayi: Didn’t analysts point to a first-week sales figure of $350m-400m? Are there any official numbers around yet?
I know no publisher gets 100% of all sales revenue, but since expectations were THAT high…
http://www.vgchartz.com/news/news.php?id=1102
apparently about $170 million, which ties in with what Halo 3 did, but this was cross platform. I can’t vouch for the validity of these figures though. Certainly it will bank strongly, but I doubt we’ll see a true picture for a couple of weeks. The demand is so strong because of the hype, I expect the sales will have dropped of significantly by then. The main thing is, that given how much it cost, it’s almost a certainty that we will see a PC release. The smart talk seems to be the 30th October as that ties in with Take 2s financial quarter, and is likely to be after the autumn promised release of the 360 DLC pack, so won’t upset Microsoft.
If it really does come out on October 30, I probably won’t ever know what Dead Space looks like.
gta 4 release november 2008 on pc
system requirement
2.8 gh
1gb ram
geforce 8600
http://rockstarscammer.blogspot.com/
did a little pranking ;^)
excerpt—
Response (Anthony) 10/06/2008 09.07 AM
Hello,
Rockstar and 2K Games are both parts of Take Two Interactive, you have corrected the right company.
The PC version of GTA IV has not even been announced for release and is still in development so is not about to be released on a website we have no knowledge of.
Why the hell are we speculating things and hoping for a PC release. There are a lot of good games for PC Gamers from last year as well as this year. COD4, BIOSHOCK, CRYSIS, ASSASSINS CREED to name a few. Even if ROCK* do not release the game on PC this year, PC gamers have alot of good games coming their way. MAFIA 2 would be releasing for PC along with consoles on Oct, 31 2008 which is going to be an even better game than GTA 4. If you are a PC gamer and you have played the above mentioned games (COD 4,etc) you should not be worried about the system requirements of any game on this planet. I feel sorry for all of you who were sucked into buying PS3 or XBOX 360 just for a game. For those of you who are looking forward to Buy PS3 for playing MGS4 (another successful game of the year), I would suggest you practice a little self-restraint as rumour is going around that by end of year 2008 Sony are planning to reduce the price by 200$.
Why the hell is it wrong to want this series to keep making PC appearances? It’s where it originated anyway, some people want it but don’t want to buy a console for it (and like you say, buying a system just for one or few such games would be silly).
Are MORE good games to chose from bad for anybody? Besides, not all those games you mentioned as examples appeal to everyone. maybe very few do depending on their tastes, so GTAIV would possibly be a welcome addition to their collection.
I’d like to see MGS4 get a port also by the way. MGS1 & 2 did. Sure they were a bit bleh as ports go but they were finely playable with a decent gamepad just as the console version so I wouldn’t mind getting MGS3 and 4 in a couple of years.
Don’t get so defensive, all PC gamers know we have a lot of good games, big budget, low budget, independent, modern, old school, quirky, weird, non games, whatever, else we wouldn’t be PC gamers at all.
Why the hell are we speculating things and hoping for a PC release.
Umm, because it’s one of the best games of the year, perhaps?
Here is some BIG NEWS. Along with Mafia 2 there is another successfull title making its way to all PC Gamers. And this one is gonna Rock cause it’s ………………….SAINTS ROW 2(Release date 14th Oct,2008)…………Your chance to play a Gangsta all over again…………….Mafia 2 and Saints Row 2 will surely make people forget about GTA 4 for a longtime. So even ifff Rockstar decides to release their GTA 4 on PC this November they would have to face stifff competition.
Nov. 18th GTA4 PC!!!!