In a crushing blow to wannabe thugs everywhere Take-Two Interactive and Rock Star games have announced that they're pushing back the release date of GTA4 from the fall to Spring 2008. In a carefully worded press release Take Two lowered financial estimates for the rest of the 2007 year simultaneously announcing that the highly anticipated game won't make it out this year. The new date is specified as falling within Take Two's second financial quarter which runs between February 1st and April 30th. If no further delays are announced the GTA4 will be released somewhere during those three months.
Rock Star cited technical difficulties for the delay, wishing to release the game on both platforms simultaneously. Recent previews of the game have highlighted the rough way the game looked referencing a very uneven framerate and significant model and texture pop-in.
My editorializing: HOLY MONKEYS. This is pretty damn big blow to the industry in general. GTA is the biggest game ever and having them miss out on the holiday season could have a far reaching impact. No GTA means less media attention, means less people in the stores, means less people buying consoles, means less people buying games in general.
It's true that GTA games suck a lot of gaming dollars out of other publisher's mouths, however the overall boost they give to the console installed base usually makes up for it in the long run. Who knows how well GTA will sell in a non-holiday season. Personally, I don't think that Rock Star are going to test that and instead the game will be released in September/October of 2008. There's just too much money to leave on the table by releasing the game in the spring and missing out on the crazy holiday rush.
The only people who benefit from this are the hardcore gamers who have a ton of games to play this season anyway, and Nintendo fans. I envisioned that the combined force of Halo 3 and GTA4, two of the biggest selling franchises, would be enough to have an impact on the Wii's sales. However, now that GTA is gone, I don't think that Halo is enough. Wii + Wii Fit are going to do exceedingly well this holiday. Halo 3 is going to do ridiculous numbers as well of course, but the massive momentum and thus shift to the HD consoles is now stalled and delayed. Yes, GTA is that important.
Considering that this is the first GTA game that I'm honestly and truly interested in I'm glad they're delaying it to improve the quality. I already have 5-10 games that I want to pick up between now and the end of the year so from a gaming perspective I don't care that much. But if this does end up having a negative impact on the industry then that'll suck badly. Take Two and Rock Star must be hurting real bad right now.
