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.”

Chuf and I have been going back and forth about the reasons for the delay for a while, but I think we’ll hold off on speculation until after more details are available.

-Aegies

Jayslacks

-Aegies

So the new story brewing over the past few days has been the comments in a recent interview between Rockstar Games’ Dan Houser and the Official Playstation Magazine (at least, according to Computer and Videogames, although OPM was dissolved by Ziff-Davis months ago) that have implied that the 360 is holding Grand Theft Auto IV back. In a question that seems more than a little, er, leading, the magazine asks:

“On PS3 you’ve got a guarantee that every machine is going to have a hard-drive and, with Blu-ray, you’ve got plenty of storage, whereas on Xbox 360 there’s no guarantee of a hard-drive and you’re working with the DVD format. Does that create limitations?”

And Houser, having only one answer I suppose, replied:

“Yep.”

It’s kind of like saying “If fire were set to a house, would it be bad?”

Of course, most people seem to ignore his follow up statement: “Both of them have enormous challenges.” That’s an honest answer. Now, discounting the benefits of compression (quicker load times) and cheaper price points, at the very least, the lack of a hard drive is indeed a technical limitation. However, given that the hard drive is usually present, and that other developers have had little problem with the situation (See: Oblivion), it seems like it’s not quite the major issue they’re making it out to be. Not only that, Rockstar has taken to showing the 360 version of the game as opposed to the PS3, so, why might that be? Could it be because the PS3 version isn’t up to snuff? I happen to think so, and I’ll tell you why.

INCOMING POST OF DOOM (because numbers are better than rhetoric)

The PS3 uses 256MB of XDR memory accessible strictly to the system and the Cell. XDR theoretically has a bus speed of around 8GB a second, which is great, save that the PS3′s system bus is nowhere near that; as a matter of fact, nothing is. Still, it’s theoretically several times faster than DDR3, even if the Cell bus prevents us from ever seeing that speed. The RSX, the PS3′s graphics processor, uses 256 MB of DDR3 memory. This is the same kind of memory in the 360, more or less. It’s slower than XDR memory, but in real world applications, there’s no processor for consumers, and that includes the Cell, that actually is capable of using the 1.8GBps bus fully.

The system cannot intrude into the GPU’s memory space, and vice versa. This is regardless of the task the system has before it. The 360 on the other hand, has a unified pool of 512 MB that is shared between the processor and the GPU, meaning the system dynamically allocates memory where it’s needed from the pool, and also that developers can specify usage of much more than 256 MB of memory by the GPU. This, combined with the unified shader architecture of the Xenos, makes it a much more flexible and powerful graphics solution. ATi is just now releasing tech used in Xenos on the market, and the unified shader architecture is the future of their cards. Giving the GPU more memory obviously decreases the amount of memory that the CPU has access to, but for games, this generally isn’t much of an issue, as graphics are, by far, the most memory intensive aspect used in current games. A side note here: the PS3 has a dedicated sound processor however, something the 360 doesn’t have, so that’s a leg up for Sony. This obviously allows things to be going on graphically on the 360 that are not possible with the RSX; while there are already quite a few examples of lower framerates and muddier textures on PS3 versions of games also on the 360, the most obvious statement denoting the importance of memory available to the GPU and memory flexibility is Microsoft’s now famous statement to Epic that they had cost them a billion dollars, due to the increase from 256MB of memory to 512, as otherwise, Gears would have been largely impossible.

Finally, there’s more bad news: the PS3 OS demands almost a hundred MB of combined memory. Ars Technica puts it this way:

“…our sources have told us that these features use approximately:

- 64mb of the 256mb of available XDR memory off the Cell CPU
- 32mb of the 256mb of available GDDR3 memory off the RSX chip
- 1 SPE of 7 constantly reserved.”

Additional online components require even more resources, with some estimates claiming that as much as 60MB of memory is required for integrated commerce transactions (i.e., downloadable content). I wonder why Bethesda has had issues implementing downloadable content. In contrast, according to Microsoft and platform developers, all Dashboard functionality and OS operations occupy a 32MB footprint from the unified pool, and require a 3% cycle commitment from Cores 1 and 2 from Xenon (I sound like a goddamned Scientologist). So in actuality, NEITHER CONSOLE HAS ACCESS TO 512MB OF MEMORY. The 360 handles memory more flexibly and has access to considerably more though.

And before I get accused of making things up, lookie, sources:

Source 1
Source 2
Source 3
Source 4

A google search can indeed provide you with more info. I didn’t cite my sources for the info on DDR3 and XDR, but you can find them easily enough, as you can with the PS3 and 360′s respective specifications.

This all isn’t to say that amazingly beautiful games aren’t possible on the PS3; Ninja Gaiden Sigma looks gorgeous and runs at 60fps; Lair is looking better and better. I’ve said before that Resistance looks good, and that comparing it to Gears of War was unfair to Resistance, given the more hectic numbers present in the latter game. But to imply that the 360 is the only system with hardware limitations is not only misleading, it’s bullshit.

Game systems have limitations. It’s up to developers to work within those limitations to get the job done. We have heard more developers by far complain about the complexities of the Cell and the poor GPU integration of the PS3 than the lack of new storage media on the 360. There are trade offs to both system configurations, and comparing them statically based on the amount of hard drive space, or whether or not they have a hard drive by default, isn’t even close to being fair to the differences between them. In the meantime, I would rather they work on compression to make the game load faster than lazily fill up a Blu-ray without optimization. In that respect, PS3 owners should be glad they’re aiming for the 360. Compressed game data is better for everyone, especially when a Blu-ray drive loads significantly more slowly than the 360′s DVD drive.

-Aegies

Judging by only the appearance and voiceover we get from what would seem to be the game’s protagonist, this installment of GTA deals with former Soviet bloc organized crime, probably the Russian Mafiya, and to be completely honest, this could lead to the most brutal GTA we’ve ever seen. Mafiya tactics and methods of enforcement make Italian, Cuban, and California Gang based organized crime look like Human Rights International, and knowing Rockstar, this will be played up in some way. Whether or not that means you’ll be wielding a Shotgun whose shells are filled with broken glass remains to be seen, but I’ve got hunches.

Unfortunately, my biggest issues with the GTA franchise are issues that a trailer just simply aren’t going to address, especially control. I have hope for this installment even amidst my ennui for the previous games given the enormous jumps in the Sandbox-game genre over just the last 18 months; I didn’t play Saints Row, but people seemed to think that it improved on a lot of GTA’s shortcomings, and Crackdown has displayed the best targeting and driving controls of any of these kinds of games I’ve had the opportunity to play. Given these advancements, and the extended development time for this installment (November will mark 3 years between GTA installments, in a franchise that saw games in 2001, 2002, and 2004), it would be hard to imagine that these issues could be ignored. Besides, the excellent control found in Table Tennis shows me that Rockstar has staff that are adept at crafting well controlling experiences. Now if they’d just implement meaningful moral consequences, then I’d be all set. But again, we’ll have to see. I’m guardedly optimistic for a franchise I haven’t cared about in years.

-Aegies

P.S. Wired has their story on Take Two, Terry Donovan and the Houser brothers, and the rocky history of GTA up on their website. If you’ve got time, it’s a hell of an interesting read.