360’s Technical Limitations Roadblocking GTA IV
- Scribbled on May 2nd, 2007 by Devin Grimes
- Filed in Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3
While each console tends to have its individual strengths over the other, the Xbox 360 has two major weaknesses against the PS3 that make a developers task much harder.
Those two components, as many of you know include the standard hard drive and a larger disc format. Rockstar recently spoke with the Official Playstation Magazine on how that’s affected the development of Grand Theft Auto IV.
The situation arose during an interview between Rockstar Creative VP Dan Houser and OPM. Houser was asked:
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?
The wording may seem like Rockstar was backed into a corner, replying with a simple “Yep,” but the technological differences between the two consoles were bound to become a problem at some point in time.
However, it’s worth noting that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas didn’t even occupy a full single layer DVD disc upon it’s release, and we can’t forget that everything we’ve seen so far of GTAIV has been running on an Xbox 360 — from the trailer, to the Game Informer exclusive screens.
(Thanks C&VG)
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:44 pm
It’s pretty doubtful that the disc storage difference will be a major problem. Unless they pack GTA4 full of FMV, the 360’s storage is still massive, compared to the average size of games. The HD limitation would be the far bigger stumbling block, though if RS actually had an issue with it, they’d almost certainly be able to get permission from MS to allow the game to require it, much like Oblivion did. There are benefits to being a top-name designer…