Its so difficult to play pirated games on the 360 it'll only get picked up by a few people anyway. Im more than happy to pay for GTA games, cos they are absolutely mental.

Paris - cos she loves gta too

360 DVD is so easilly ripped and downloadable...

This news is serioiusly damaging for Microsoft, who can't secure their console, so publishers may be tempted to shop elsewhere.

It's well documented, that GTA IV is the last Xbox360 game from Rockstar, it's PS3 exclusive all the way now. 360 owners should enjoy it (although that may be hard, as from what many sources are saying, the 360 game is very dark, with significant frame rate troubles and inferior to the PS3 version).

Pre-ordered mine on PS3 weeks ago. Counting the days.

If anything, the 360 is the easiest of the current gen consoles to play pirated/homebrew material on.

Personally I'm waiting for the PC release (no doubt in 2-3 years time) so I can play it properly. It'll be a long time though because somehow the PC is "inferior" or something, and we're not worthy, blah blah blah. Load of crap :P

One of the arguments you hear quite often from Freetards is that they don't like to pay for games/films/music and then find they've wasted their money on something duff. Given that every review I've seen for GTA 4 pretty much touts it as a masterpiece, I doubt that argument will stick here.

As with Dave (first comment on this article) I am more than happy to pay for this game, because it looks like being the best way of wasting time I'm likely to have for quite a long while. I honestly hope this IS a virus, and bricks the consoles of those downloading it as it'd serve them right.

It leaked 24+ hours ago... Keep up Reg.

Why have no stores broke the street date yet? I want to play now AND pay for it... Sick day on Tuesday? BOOMY!

I'll be buying it. Reviews have all been off the scale and innovation and gameplay like that deserves reward imo.

And who, really, can be arsed with messing about with consoles getting them to run pirated discs? Not me thats for sure.

It's not in keeping with the spirit of the game unless you beat someone to death in order to nick a copy.

as said by dave they are good value for money,so i dont mind handing over some hard cash!

>> Im more than happy to pay for GTA games, cos they are absolutely mental.

IMHO I suspect a significant percentage of those downloading it will probably pay for it as well, it's the sort of product which inspires that sort of loyalty. Heck half of them have probably already (pre-)ordered it.

>> Paris - cos she loves gta too

GTA? More like DUI.

PS, isn't the Reg a bit slow with this one, ISTR seeing it had been leaked 2 days ago.

I think it leaked a couple of days ago. Some stores have actually started selling it today (a few Asda's included).

No idea why it wasn't a normal Friday release anyway thus allowing people to play it over the weekend. A Tuesday release is a bad idea.

If this had happened a month ago, I might have tried it, but GTA4 is one of those games I'm wanting to pay for, to show my appreciatio to the development team, kinda like wanting the DVDs to the fantastic US comedy Arrested Development.

Interested to read some 'early-adopter' reviews tho!

Just to add, The Pirate's Bay has dubbed itself 'Liberty Bay' for the day, with a new GTA-esque logo!

There's always the risk of Microsoft wiseing up to the latest way of altering the DVD drive firmware and issuing bans from xbox live anyway. I'm perfectly happy to pay for GTA, especially since my order was dispatched a few hours ago, so will be with me either tomorrow or Monday. I'm also managing to avoid any spoilers/videos resulting from this leaked copy, so as not to dilute my enjoyment of actually playing the game.

Again with 'Freetards'! Using it to describe FOSS users was obviously a total hoot, but using it to apply to pirates is starting to look like joke recycling. Try starting all paragraphs with 'This one time in band camp...' if you run out of good ideas.

And while I'm here, GTA? Back in the good old days that was a proper franchise, but San Andreas was just an exercise in pretending to drive endless distances. It would only really appeal to someone who's idea of a holiday involved a nine hour car-journey to the Lakes (though culminating rather oddly in a hit). I'd prefer to cleanse a database.

Got it on pre order and more than happy to pay if it's even half as good as San Andreas. Most gamers will no doubt be the same so the impact is minimal.

This is only a story on a slow news day.

I'll pass. For a start, I don't have an X-Box. For a finish, I'm not even off the first island/city in GTAIII. In fairness, my PC with everything on is wrapped up in my parents' cellar and has been for 2 years.

By the time I get around to GTA-IV, it'll be abandonware.

The game is sold-out by preorders on all online game retailers. I really don't see this tarnishing the title’s launch.

I thought "GTA 4" would basically be the last 3 games (Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City) as these are the cities in GTA1, albeit chopped up and in reverse order.

Otherwise, it would be GTA 7 then. Wouldn't it ?

i can't see this really dinting sales in the slightest - i've ordered the game and am waiting for it to come on tuesday but still go round my mates to play it on his, who has also ordered it

i know about 50-100 ppl with flashed xboxs and all of em have downloaded it but all of em are buying it at some point or another

its just one of those games ppl wanna own

I realise this doesn't help you but ShopTo.Net dispatched my preordered PS3 copy today to be delivered tomorrow morning!

As a matter of fac,t GTA III (Liberty City), Vice City and San Andreas were just GTA 3D: Part One, Part Two and Part Three, they could do GTA London: 1969 3D now...Screw the present and american accent, we want some 60s with lots of british things!

/british coat

"It's well documented, that GTA IV is the last Xbox360 game from Rockstar, it's PS3 exclusive all the way now. 360 owners should enjoy it (although that may be hard, as from what many sources are saying, the 360 game is very dark, with significant frame rate troubles and inferior to the PS3 version)."

Completely made up fanboy rubbish. First, both versions are almost identical. Second, there are many more 360's than PS3's right now. That may change - but right now Rockstar would not pull out of developing for 360.

Get over it AC. It's just a box of electronics to play games on, it doesn't need your love.

Yes Sony's crappy architecture and SDK arethe reason we're all still waiting. Had it been XBox only, we'd have had it last November.

Not preodered it. Will go into town the day its released.

I'm pretty sure that it won't damage profitability too much, many people who sometimes freetard stuff recognise that these chaps need to make a profit of it. Given that this is so clearly a work of art, that's going to give hours of enjoyment.

I for one shall be buying a copy at the cheapest (legal!) vendor upon release ;)

it's a console game... mnyaaaaaahhh where's the IT angle?

"This news is serioiusly damaging for Microsoft, who can't secure their console, so publishers may be tempted to shop elsewhere."

Bull. Piracy is only damaging if people choose the pirate version instead of buying the original. Given the massive pre-orders, that's not happening with GTA4. The most likely group of people downloading this are people who have already pre-ordered and just can't wait another few days before playing. If the sales for the 360 version of GTA4 turn out to be much lower than for the PS3, you might have a point but I doubt that'll happen.

@Andy Worth: the argument still stands. Have you ever heard rave reviews for a movie/CD/book/game and just not liked it at all? Most of us have. Just because everyone else in the world thinks a game is a masterpiece doesn't mean you will, and the cost of a new next-gen game is pretty high for a lot of people to waste if they don't like it.

...and yeah, enough with the "freetard" crap already. You people can't even decide who it refers to - one minute it's illegal downloaders, the next FOSS advocates, the next people who get legal free downloads (like the NIN albums). It wasn't funny when the word was coined, and it's even less funny when you can't even decide who it applies to.

@Daniel B: It's been said but worth repeating. Vice City, San Andreas, et al. were all spin-offs from GTA3, not true sequels. It's like the Resident Evil series - there were lots of Code Veronicas, Outbreaks, etc. between RE3 and RE4, but they weren't part of the official timeline.

Funny how when it's a game (and true a very good game), where people

can get personal value out of it as opposed to business value out of it, few people here are clambouring over themselves saying it should be open source and given away free despite the multi millions of pounds it cost to develop, and that instead Rockstar should make there money from support (for when you've pinched your neighbours car etc...) and making t-shirts...

Bollocks. They leaked this themselves to create more buzz. There's always going to be a few who'll hack their consoles & go through the rigmarole of getting the ISO working on it, and guess what? The buzz they create makes everyone else want it eve more...

Give me a break REG... are fake Steve Jobbs or something.. i agree with above posts: its either FOSS or pirates.. not both. Pick one, or better yet, do us all a favor stop using it.

"Yes Sony's crappy architecture and SDK arethe reason we're all still waiting. Had it been XBox only, we'd have had it last November."

Do you REALLY still believe that to be true, now that it transpires that the PS3 version is so much better than the 360 version.

Sounds like BOTH systems had their issues, the PS3 issues were merely coding issues, that have mostly been resolved, but the 360 issues were hardware, and havn't been resolved (have you seen how slow the loading times are, and how bad the popups are on the 360 version?? - Google for it).

All reviews are pointing to the PS3 version of GTA IV being the best, sites that are in damage control mode, say it's slightly better, other sites claim it's significantly better.

Finding a game that hasn't been pirated at some point is the difficult one. The fact that this game is high profile doesn't make it any less susceptible.

I've got some of the other GTAs to play first though. That, and other expenses are continuing to slow me down in buying a PS3.

I pre-ordered early last year!!! Only to find out that the release date was moved back from 19/10/07 to 29/04/08!

Well, at least we can see why they were anonymous. That's a quite stupendous load of nosense. The 360 and PS3 versions are near-identical, with only really minor framerate differences (and they're 'differences' - while the PS3 drops frames less often than the 360, it does so in places where the 360 remains smooth) and very occasional popup on the 360 when going somewhere that hasn't been cached yet.

Rockstar will continue to release 360 games while it makes them profit. Meanwhile, I note that of the 3 Rockstar titles available on that platform, only GTA4 is on the PS3. So you might want to check your kitchenware albedo.

its a shame you can't ban boring people reg, because every comments thread you go in these days that happens to mention either 360 or sony there he is.

he just whines and whines about the 360

(dbTechno)February 25, 2008 - "According to reports, all future games from Rockstar beyond Grand Theft Auto IV will be exclusive to the PS3. GTA IV is slated to release in April on the Xbox 360 and PS3, but that may be all the love Xbox 360 owners get from Rockstar.

They stated in a report in Play Magazine “The game is both PS3 and 360, but Rockstar has suggested that all further game development is going to be PS3 exclusive.”

This has led many to believe that Rockstar is planning to once again be an exclusive developer for the Sony camp with all future games."

hahahahahahahaha.... suck on that xblot fanbois

Are you lying, or just illiterate?

The PS3 release is not "so much better". It has slightly better popup when traversing areas of the map that 360 owners have not been to yet, and the AA is, to some eyes but not others, a tiny bit smoother. In addition, the initial load time is a bit better, though nowhere near as bad as it used to be on the PS2 releases, and finally some people prefer the default colour saturation setting on the PS3 release. Others prefer the 360's look, and still further people are clever enough to RTFM before using the options to set it how they would like.

I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess that you've not actually seen the two formats running the game at all, but are merely repeating what other Sony fanboys have written elsewhere.

I repeat: There is a very slight technical edge to the PS3 release (and yes, that comes after several months of dedicated help from senior Sony technicians on-site to get the game up to the speed of the 360 version), which is tiny compared to the differences in personal preference for which controller you like the most, and which one will have the more friends you can play the multiplayer stuff with.

maybe, but I am not an Anonymous Coward. So really, we don't actually know you are not on every thread.

Infact, you mus also be boring, as you would have to visit every one of those threads to realise that.

Coward.

Yes thats what it said, ANONYMOUS COWARD!!! A name on a forum has no meaning, i could be fart24, or BigArse, or anything else. What does it really matter?

Well done you for actually processing that through your brain, heres us thinking that it was just full of Sony brainwaves controlling your dense mind.

See Mark, what the problem with you seems to be is simply the same problem that plagued the world when Nintendo brought the N64 out.

Nintendo had become bullish and realised that their ridiculous fanbase would take anything given to them, so they decided to make the console they wanted to and released the N64. They then followed suit with the Gamecube! HA! Still Nintendo fans stuck with them to the end, because thats what they do.

You're blindly doing the same thing, you don't appreciate anything else on the market, and you probably can't because you're so wired in to Sony. If things were different and you had Sony release say, the equivelent of the 360 and MS were late to the market with their version of a PS3 you would be doing the exact same thing. Let me guess... you're house is full of Sony stuff too? Sony TV? Sony walkman? Sony Y-Fronts?

Its funny watching you struggle to keep up, slamming XBox owners for doing the exact same thing you're doing while also manically searching through your portfolio of Sony statistical links. Well done you, do you have any time left in the day to actually play the games you harp on about?

Try and make some decent remarks, something constructive. All you are right now is the Sony version of the people that write those XBox comments that you hate.

Iain, you're dead on - i bet he hasn't seen the two formats running. I bet he's barely even played an XBox, its simply that its the opposition and it kills him that its doing better than his PS3.

As for the pitiful response you gave this time, give me a break! I don't comment on anything at all. However i do read the stories on here and view the comments (the latter of which i'm slowly giving up on thanks to people like you who flood the threads with repetitive dribble) and i've noticed your irritating presence on each one. You can even tell when you've decided to become anonymous!! Its so simple. Like you my friend, simple and dull.

Seriously thinking of plumping down for a PS3 (not for any one console is better than another - I used to hate all consoles equally, but PS3 for the Bluray player), but man, this game looks kickarse and waiting a year or two for the PC release... it hurts, but of course mass effect is on the 360 and not the PS3 so... meh, maybe I'll wait.