[Adriaan]

Sad news for a lot of fans tonight, GTA IV has been delayed due to ''additional development time required'' to complete the title. The game is now planned to be released in the second quarter of Rockstar Games' parent company, Take Two, which stretches over February, March and April.

We received this e-mail from Rockstar Games:

Hi everyone,
I wanted to tell you personally that we have decided to move Grand Theft Auto IV back a bit. We also want to thank you for all the incredible support you've shown us over the years. We’ll have more information very soon, but in the meantime here’s a release we’re sending out to the press.

Best wishes,
Sam

Sam Houser
Founder Rockstar Games

The press release states that the parent company is updating its financial guidance, of course due to the delay, where we get a clear reason for pushing back the title...

Strauss Zelnick, Chairman of Take-Two, stated, ''With Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar is setting a new standard for next generation video games. Certain elements of development proved to be more time-intensive than expected, especially given the commitment for a simultaneous release on two very different platforms. We all recognize that perfecting the game is vital and I can assure everyone it will be worth the wait. We owe it to the game's millions of fans, to our dedicated development team, and to our shareholders to make sure that Grand Theft Auto IV is a groundbreaking gaming experience that takes maximum advantage of next generation technology.''

Sam Houser, Founder and Executive Producer of Rockstar Games, added, ''The new consoles are allowing us to create the Grand Theft Auto game we always dreamed about. Every aspect of the game and its design has been completely transformed. The game is huge and is pushing the hardware platforms to their absolute limits. The top engineers from Sony and Microsoft are working closely with the team in Edinburgh right now, helping us to fully leverage the power of both platforms. As always, our goal is to surpass even the wildest expectations of the game's fans, and to create the ultimate high definition video game experience.''

More details are to follow soon, and a conference call that can be streamed via the web is scheduled for 5:30 PM EDT. We'll update you as we receive more details.

Press Release: Take-Two

UPDATE: Nothing else came out during the conference call, just reassurance that they want to bring out the title at its best, and not finish it up sooner to meet the holiday release schedule.

[Dudemanjosh]

This really sucks... How can Rockstar do this to us?

[rhd]

This not a surprise....I mean when did Rockstar gives us a date without changing it later on eh?

I think its good that it got delayed....I mean they just got working on the radio!

[Vini]

Oh damn, that's just shocking news! If it was a 1 or 2 month delay then it would be alright, but a 6 month delay? I know the game will be better, but I was just so excited about October 16! I guess I'm going to have to settle down now and forget about GTA IV for a while.
Another thing with this big delay is, are they going to stop releasing previews for some months? The past couple of months there was one major new preview every month, but I guess that we won't get any more previews this year.
I have to admit I'm kind of disappointed, but also happy because with all this extra time Rockstar will be able to create the best next-gen game yet, and all the technical problems that some websites reported will be gone. R* will be able to polish the game, and probably add even more features.

And thanks for posting this on GTAPortable Adriaan.

This post has been edited by Vini: Aug 2 2007, 10:34 PM

[farelli09]

shit now it's going to be released while I'm in my second semester. Looks like no GTA4 until spring break.

[Ness]

I'm not surprised, ive been anticipating this. but im not angry, this was bound to happen. i mean come on its GTA IV. after analyzing the same portion of the game that we saw, we can safely say that this game is going to be f**king sweet

on a sidenote, this is in the wrong section

[KewKat]

WTF???? DELAY???? WHEN THE FLIP HAVE WE EVER HAD A DELAY??? TILL MAY???? OMG. OMFG. ok, calm down. calm down. calm down. 1st STAGE - DENIAL: No, this can't be happening. Released in april or may?? When I wake up, I will calmly get up, go to the restroom, take a shower, get on gtaportable.com, and WALA!! NEWS FLASH-------GTA4 pushed up!! Yeah, that's all it is. A dream!! Maybe a joke if I stretch it!! Yeah!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 2nd STAGE - ANGER: WTF IS WRONG WITH ROCKSTAR!!! I HATE THEM!!! They push back everything!! If I wanted pushbacks, I would have went to zelda GODDAMNIT!! Don't make me threaten MICROSOFT!!! 3rd STAGE - BARGAINING: Sam Houser, please, ol please ol please change your mind!! PLEASE!!! I'll go get VCS out of that pawn shop I sold it to if you do!!! PLEASE!! I'll be a human sacrifice FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!! PLEASE!!! On the flip side, I'll threaten the esrb for rating your manhunt 2 adults only, so they can lower the rating to E, and you know we BOTH want that... 4th STAGE - DEPRESSION: Why is there so much crime in this world??? Why must this world be so cruel to such innocent beings? I could stomach ophra, but THIS?? I think i'm gunna go abuse my asthma pump, and look at Jack Thompson's face. Yep, killing myself is worse than I thought it would be. 5th STAGE - ACCEPTANCE: Well, the Decision has been made. GTA4 isn't coming out in October, like all the OTHER gta's. It wants to be different, bastard child. But, look on the bright side!! They could spruce up the graphics a bit more! And maybe make the city a bit bigger! And maybe, with the extended time, make the soundtrack bigger!! YAAAAY!!! Yo, maybe we can finally dual wield melee weapons!! And all we have to wait is ONE MORE YEAR!!!!! ................................ AW SH#T. 1st STAGE - DENIAL..............

[whoelse]

Yeah, f**king hell!

Shame they didnt do a 1 month delay with Vice City Stories too, coz we all know how many glitches that had.

[The Grim Reaper]

Duh.... they never come out on time

[Snipers Paradise™]

I was not surprised to here this, but when Vice City Stories was delayed people would have rathered the game to be delayed longer to fix the many bugs that were found in the game. With GTA IV being delayed for basically another year, at release date there had better not be any bugs. This sucks big time

[masterHouse]

Its Microsofts fault, the DVD 9 that the Xbox 360 uses is not capable for all the GTA IV data, Microsoft doesnt want the game on 2 dvds so the until they can put it on 1 dvd, and for the PS3 users, let Microsoft burn to the ground because Microsoft had a contract with R* that GTA IV will not be released on other Consoles or PC untill the 360 version is released, so thank you Microsoft for being a retard! Sony did well and there are no problems with Blu-ray, Blu-ray can handle the game easily

So now all the PS3 users have to waith because Microsoft has problems, F*ck you Peter Moore!

source in Dutch http://www.powerweb.nl/artikel.jsp?rubriek...&id=2130250

This post has been edited by masterHouse: Aug 4 2007, 08:02 PM

[The Grim Reaper]

Its Microsofts fault, the DVD 9 that the Xbox 360 uses is not capable for all the GTA IV data

LMAO! hah take that, blu-rays shite now huh?

This post has been edited by The Grim Reaper: Aug 4 2007, 09:25 PM

[Vini]

Its Microsofts fault, the DVD 9 that the Xbox 360 uses is not capable for all the GTA IV data, Microsoft doesnt want the game on 2 dvds so the until they can put it on 1 dvd, and for the PS3 users, let Microsoft burn to the ground because Microsoft had a contract with R* that GTA IV will not be released on other Consoles or PC untill the 360 version is released, so thank you Microsoft for being a retard! Sony did well and there are no problems with Blu-ray, Blu-ray can handle the game easily

So now all the PS3 users have to waith because Microsoft has problems, F*ck you Peter Moore!

source in Dutch http://www.powerweb.nl/artikel.jsp?rubriek...&id=2130250

What are you talking about? Everyone is making up different stories about the reason of why GTA IV was delayed, but the truth is that no one knows the exact reason, yu have some annoynmous source in Dutch.(which is BS) And if you want I can also throw a story at your face(which in fact came from more reliable sources) but it's also bogus:

With Take-Two remaining tight-lipped about what's really behind the Grand Theft Auto IV delay – they're going with the vague "almost strictly technological challenges" defense – it's up to the pundits, analysts, bloggers, and anonymous tipsters to give us the skinny on what's really going down. First up to bat is video game analyst extraordinaire, Michael Pachter who told our pals at GameDaily BIZ, "We think it is likely that the Rockstar team had difficulty in building an exceptionally complicated game for the PS3, and failed to recognize how far away from completion the game truly was until recently." Of course, he means really recently, since Take-Two did just reaffirm their plans to ship the game in October as recently as E3 (yeah, the one last month).

We know what you're thinking: Why not release the game for Xbox 360 in ought seven, and ship the PS3 release whenever it's ready (everyone else seems to be taking this course of action)? Pachter further surmises "that Take-Two had a contractual commitment to Sony that it would not favor competitor Microsoft by launching the Xbox 360 version of GTA IV prior to launching the PS3 version," calling it "the only plausible explanation." Guess he doesn't think much of our theory that the targeting was too accurate and intuitive and needed to be retooled.

Joystiq
GameDaily
Like I said the truth is that NOBODY outside of Take Two knows the exact reason of the delay. I don't want to start any console wars argument with fanboys so lets just wait until an official announcement.

[TheSSgamer]

I KNEW IT!!!!

Every GTA gets postponed/delayed!!!

Anyway so i guess now GTA IV's time setting is gonna be in 2008, eh?...and not in 2007?

[san<>tran]

In one of the articles I've read showed that the Playstation version of the game was maybe a week behind the Xbox. Well this was proven to be a flawed ballpark estimate as Rockstar North failed to identify how far behind the Playstation version was, which it could be a toss up between 2-3 months behind schedule. If Rockstar simply did not comply with Sony's contract, then Rockstar's license to publish on the PS3 would be revoked with accounts for maybe 55% of GTA IV expected sales.