Grand Theft Auto IV war between Xbox 360, PS3 heating up (News)

GamePro staff, GamePro (online)

24/04/2008 08:37:00

The Xbox 360 version of Grand Theft Auto IV may have better episodic content, but Sony wants you to know the PS3 is where the game was meant to be played.

This week the gang war played out on the streets of Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV officially spilled into the realm of a real world console war as Sony started marketing the blockbuster title as one that is "meant to played" on the PlayStation 3, not the Xbox 360.

The tag line originally appeared on the Amazon web site as part of a well-concealed paid advertising campaign by Sony. The line has since been updated by Amazon to reflect a much less incendiary "Experience Grand Theft Auto IV on the PS3."

While the gaff may have made it appear as though Amazon was favouring one version of the game over the other, Joystiq did some digging on Tuesday and discovered that Sony had indeed paid for the marketing line. An Amazon rep told the gaming blog that the Sony wording was in fact "a campaign paid for by Sony" and that Microsoft will be "doing something similar next week."

In related fuel-on-the-flames news, Rockstar president Sam Houser lambasted the Xbox 360 hardware difficulties his developers encountered when making GTAIV. Houser said in an interview with 1up that a lack of storage space on Xbox 360 discs and Microsoft's non-mandatory hard drive strategy were "problematic".

"One of the problems with the 360, and it affects games like Grand Theft Auto if you think about how much content we put in the actual machine, is the fact that they don't have a significantly larger storage medium than the previous systems. It's a slightly bigger DVD disc," he said.