It can't be the development cost of the DLC. That amount of money is just too big. So, what else are they working on? Even with DLC for GTA4 and another game, they'd use up maybe half of that money. So, are we going to see DLC, an exclusive and something else? I can't see Microsoft allowing their money to be spent on development for the PS3 or Wii, unless it's cross platform and payed back with a good deal of interest.
The old and unwieldy GTA4 thread*
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It can't be the development cost of the DLC. That amount of money is just too big. So, what else are they working on? Even with DLC for GTA4 and another game, they'd use up maybe half of that money. So, are we going to see DLC, an exclusive and something else? I can't see Microsoft allowing their money to be spent on development for the PS3 or Wii, unless it's cross platform and payed back with a good deal of interest.
Think of it this way. MS loaned 50 million to rockstar, which rockstar will/has use/d for GTAIV development + the 2 GTAIV episodes, the interest is essentially MS' payment to R* for the exclusivity of the DLC.
I get that, but how could development of GTA4 + 2 episodes cost 50 million? Why not 30 million. Certainly 30 million would cover their efforts, and I would think Rockstar is rich enough to fund some of the development with their own money. Of course, I'm just some hack on the internet that has no idea what he's talking about, but it just seemed like a really excessive loan to me.
Didn't rockstar just recently have to pay out a large settlement regarding hot coffee? Its not inconceivable that there's $50 million invested into GTAIV, given what we know about the development costs of some other games.
It's very unlikely that the DLC costs $25 million to develop. But who says it's?
Nothing else is included in the deal as far as public knowledge goes, besides two episodic contents.
DLC may be very important in the end, who knows.
It will be a marketing point, and possibly MS's tool to attract more people to Live.
Because maybe Sony bid 35 million, and Microsoft had to outbid them. We'll never know for sure. What is sure though is that money is always flying around behind the scenes, in numerous deals of which the public at large never finds out about. With a bid as large as 50 million, I suspect Microsoft were not the only company attempting to grease the Rockstar wheel.
My take on it is really simple. With the current battle being what it is, Rockstar likely approached both MS and Sony and asked "what have you done for me lately?". The bidding war began, and Microsoft won. Simple as that. It's certainly not the first time something like this has happened in games.
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Afaik Sony dropped the ball on this game, maybe they had to much on their hands or more likely, at that time they didn´t expect to be so much behind as they are now. Arrogance is dangerous.
aaronspink
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The elephant in the room is the development cost for GTA4 itself. I'm assuming that 50 mil either covers it completely or comes close. If that is correct, then the assumptions for the DLC are pretty large.
with that assumed, that would relate to DLC approximating the complexity of the game itself with sell through on a roughly equal level as the initial sell through for the xb360 version itself. With that in mind it isn't hard to see expectations from both side of DLC on the order of VC or SA themselves. Assuming that there is a time delayed exclusivity involved, it then allows R* to later publish the DLC as stand alone titles or as part of a later platinum edition for other platforms.
Assuming 6 month intervals between release and DLC releases it also allows R* a significant amount of streaming income to offset the normal spike oriented incoming of the game biz.
Further, it can be viewed as part of a strategy by MS to eventually move the GTA franchise from the original PS exclusive, to multi-platform, to XB exclusive (or timed exclusive) which would be a fairly large win for MS.
Whether or not the DLC contains new cities or not it is possible to see how the DLC could allow R* to explore the same game world but from a different perspective or timeline using the existing major and secondary characters in the game and doing their life story instead of the main one, but regardless one would expect that they would at least add/add to the existing city by possibly putting in the various NYC burroughs that are currently not in LC or are not fully fleshed out. Or possibly add in say a boston analog to expand the landmass like SA had both SF and LA analogs.
And there is nothing to stop R* from using the new city for other expansions getting maximal reuse of assets for future games.
Aaron Spink
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archangelmorph
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The DLC isn't likely going to be "new cities" IMO purely because I find it hard to see how anyone could afford the HDD space nor the download time to pull a 6-9GB~ file down the wire..
Not to mention the fact that a new city would have to be populated with content & as such, require a much longer time investment in terms of development.. & if you're going to spend another 2 years developing that kind of content then you're better off shipping on disc to the widest possible audience (360 & PS3)..
IMO it's much more likely to assume it would be a competely new content set but using the same assets (a la Liberty/Vice City Stories..)
Not to mention the fact that a new city would have to be populated with content & as such, require a much longer time investment in terms of development.. & if you're going to spend another 2 years developing that kind of content then you're better off shipping on disc to the widest possible audience (360 & PS3)..
IMO it's much more likely to assume it would be a competely new content set but using the same assets (a la Liberty/Vice City Stories..)
aaronspink
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not really, it depends on the sales rate. For example, 360 would need roughly a 25-30% attach rate to make MS 50 mil assuming the rumors of a $10 per copy royalty rate is correct. So 50 mil is a sizable chunk of change. It roughly the same amount of money as T2 will make on ~2 million copies of GTA4, so likely 20% of the revenue they will make on the game.
aaronspink
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Assuming large scale texture reuse the size of a new city would be a lot smaller than that. Most of the audio (radio and generic audio) can be reused as well. So you are looking at primarily new geometry and mission specific audio, so maybe about 2-3 GB which can be downloaded by most people in 2-3 hours.
but a lot of the content has already started production for the DLC. Also I expect a fairly wide range of DLC: new mission packs, alternative character packs, vehicles pack, and finally city/mission pack over a 6-15 month schedule with likely a total combined end user cost of around $40-$50. The city pack may or may not be an entirely new city but will at least likely expand the borders of LC.
Very uninspired if they go this route, of course i would most likely end up buying everything if i could
ShadowRunner
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If the DLC is to be similar to VC or SA then why not make exclusive standalone games instead? Surely this would be better for all involved (not Sony ). It would surely make MS and rockstar a lot more money, and obviously MS having exclusive full GTA games would do a lot more for them than mysterious DLC that nobody knows about.
Same goes for the idea that the DLC would be $50mil worth of content, why not use that to fund a whole standalone GTA game for MS instead?
). It would surely make MS and rockstar a lot more money, and obviously MS having exclusive full GTA games would do a lot more for them than mysterious DLC that nobody knows about.Same goes for the idea that the DLC would be $50mil worth of content, why not use that to fund a whole standalone GTA game for MS instead?
If the DLC is to be similar to VC or SA then why not make exclusive standalone games instead? Surely this would be better for all involved (not Sony
Same goes for the idea that the DLC would be $50mil worth of content, why not use that to fund a whole standalone GTA game for MS instead?
I could see GTA's DLC including cities or areas that aren't big enough for a full fledge game flesh out Liberty City surrounding areas.
VC and SA were considered expansions of GTA3 probably due to the fact that LC, VC and SA were all part of GTA1. If memory serves me correctly GTA2 was just some big noname city broken down into three parts.
Maybe, GTA4 will be to GTA2 what GTA3 was to GTA1 and the DLC will be additions to Liberty City. However, I would love additional cities like AC or philly. Maybe the inclusion of Bloomfield NJ area where the Sopranos takes place and where the real NJ mafia is located.
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I wonder if they might release a compilation of the cities later on, if that is what the DLC entails. I wouldn't expect the downloads to be small, and with entire cities, that may be problematic for the majority of users who at best, start out with 14GB to use for XBLM and ripped music.
Essentially, they would be resorting to episodic releases followed by a retail compilation rather than having longer waits in-between. For example, take the restricted areas in any of the GTA3 series and release them over time.
There is already a lot of content on XBox Live in those size ranges (HD Movies 3-6GB, XBox Originals 5-9GB, etc.) Rumor has it the new standard SKU will be 60GB, and for us Elite owners, its no problem. And besides, you don't have to keep the content on your hard drive, once you have paid for something, you can download it over again as often as you need to.
Here's an interesting piece regarding the cost of making a game.
If there's enough interest in discussing cost a mod could spin it off in its own thread, but I posted it here as some were wondering about the possible cost of GTAIV and where the $50 million loan could have been used.
If there's enough interest in discussing cost a mod could spin it off in its own thread, but I posted it here as some were wondering about the possible cost of GTAIV and where the $50 million loan could have been used.
I wouldn't suspect that incoporating new cities will require large amount of space. If the DLC relies on the majority of its art assets coming from GTA4 disc, one could minimize the space needed on the HDD. The majority of the game could be recycle assets with the HDD reserved for non recycled material.
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