Any word on GTA IV for the PC yet?

UtopiA said:
Why even bother coming into a PC gaming thread to tell us to become console gamers?
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Who did that? :confused:

I'm a PC gamer too. It's just I can enjoy the game now and you can't. Not to mention, if the port ends up sucking and running a terrible framerate at high resolutions, it'll be a non-ssue with me. whereas with strict PC gamers, itll be months of waiting for a bad port that you probably won't play.

In conclusion, it's a win-win situation for me. if the PC port is good, I'll get it and enjoy gta4 at 1920x1080.
 
GJohn said:
As soon as GTA4 comes out for PC, i will be getting new PC :)
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Yeah same, though I expect GTA4 to run swimmingly on most 'current' gaming systems.
But I'm definitely prepared for a new graphics card if need be. Especially at 1920x1200.
 
Michaelius said:
There's nothing stopping you from connecting to PC with that X360 pad :)

Anyway they won't tell anything about PC version till x milions of coppies for consoles are sold after all why should they tell people that there will be better and cheaper version few months later :D
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I forgot about that, good point! I have not been disappointed with a GTA on the PC yet. I just couldn't wait to play it.
 
I wonder if GTA IV will support Physics and CUDA technology......???? And I wonder if it will include Mulitplayer? San Andreas and VC never did but their has been individual releases for it though!
 
A couple of other things...

First, you can get all of the GTA titles online via Steam. So they know the value of online distribution and they are using it.

Second, they already built the game. All they have to do is port it, and they can outsource that work if they want.

Third, it gives them a chance to sell you the same game twice. Once for a console and once for PC.

Fourth, piracy is a consideration. If they announced it for PC at the same time as the console versions, you would have a considerable number of savvy gamers who would pass on the console version in anticipation of getting a free, leaked copy. There is just no incentive to give PC gamers that big of a heads up. If you are the type that downloads games illegally just to "try it" or because "you wouldn't buy it anyway," you are giving developers second thoughts about the PC platform, thanks very much. You have to remember that a multiplatform game that is pirated on PC is not just a lost PC sale, it is a lost console sale as well because chances are those pirates would have bought a console version of the game if they had to.

This may be the reason why we are not getting Battlefield: Bad Company or Force Unleashed either. Instead we get a dumbed down, "free" Battlefield. I think that speaks volumes. We are in a bad way here.

I personally am disturbed by how commonplace piracy has become and how casually it is viewed. Games are pretty expensive to develop, there is financial risk involved, and it is just irrational to expect developers to fully embrace the PC platform and give their games away. It is turning them off to PC when they do their cost/benefit analysis. Why should they expose all that valuable IP to piracy when they can force pirates to buy it for console?
 
You can pirate console games almost as easy as PC games which really renders most of that incorrect.

Due to the nature of the platforms and their users I'd say that piracy is probably a whole lot less common on consoles, but honestly if that's the case and developers abandon the PC gaming market for the console one, the pirates are just going to follow and no doubt piracy will then boom there as well, and we'll be back to square one.
 
Frostex said:
You can pirate console games almost as easy as PC games which really renders most of that incorrect.

Due to the nature of the platforms and their users I'd say that piracy is probably a whole lot less common on consoles, but honestly if that's the case and developers abandon the PC gaming market for the console one, the pirates are just going to follow and no doubt piracy will then boom there as well, and we'll be back to square one.
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Spot on.

Console gamers on average simply just lack the knowledge that PC-only gamers have.

I dont even own a console, but it's unbelievably easy for me to "acquire" console games through several different avenues.

In fact, Im perusing through a couple of different sites right now and what do I see:
Oh, about 175 pages of console games that have been ripped on one site
And, 95 pages on the other site.

GTA IV anyone?
Halo 3?
Mass Effect?
Assassins Creed?
Project Gotham Racing?

Oh, and you think the PS3 is unhackable?
Devil May Cry 4, anyone fancy that?
GT5 Prologue?

All of these are only a few clicks away.
I could leave my PC on 24/7, come back tomorrow night, and have virtually every single X360 game worth having and throw in a few PS3 games for good measure as well.

Hell, even Wii games too.

If you know where to look and what to do, then pirating is just as easy on consoles as it is on PC's.

Most console gamers however are a clueless bunch when it comes to anything technically demanding beyond simply operating their console (i.e. turning it on and off).
 
Hamidxa said:
Most console gamers however are a clueless bunch when it comes to anything technically demanding beyond simply operating their console (i.e. turning it on and off).
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Which is why if pc gaming was dead, piracy stil wont have a big impact on console gaming unless they can fully crack the consoles like they did with the dreamcast, ie just download and burn a pirate game and slot it into your 360 and will work just like the original without any mod chips etc
 
Hamidxa said:
Spot on.

Console gamers on average simply just lack the knowledge that PC-only gamers have.

I dont even own a console, but it's unbelievably easy for me to "acquire" console games through several different avenues.

In fact, Im perusing through a couple of different sites right now and what do I see:
Oh, about 175 pages of console games that have been ripped on one site
And, 95 pages on the other site.
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OK so here's the dirty truth (from a private tracker)

I selected PS2/PS3/Xbox360/Wii and PSP and listing 985 pages of 20 per page, thats ~19,700 console titles...

Selecting PC/ISO theres 543 pages, that's ~10860, close to half the releases of all the consoles put together.

I selected PC/ISO and Xbox360 in the list and arranged by the total number of times they were downloaded from highest to lowest and copied the results for the first page of 20 (these are trimmed of anything that's not a full release, such as a crack or rarfix)

Games/PC-ISO Need for Speed Carbon Collectors Edition-Razor1911 = 5,526
Games/PC-ISO Crysis-Razor1911 = 5,082
Games/PC-ISO Call Of Duty 4-Razor1911 = 4,998
Games/PC-ISO Command And Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars Kane Edition DVD9-FLT = 4,174
Games/XBox360 Gears Of War READNFO MULTi2 NTSC XBOX360-SuperX360 = 3,949
Games/XBox360 Lost Planet Extreme Condition PAL XBOX360-Allstars = 3,709
Games/XBox360 Halo 3 XBOX360-CCCLX = 3,425
Games/XBox360 Splinter Cell Double Agent PAL XBOX360-Allstars = 3,265
Games/XBox360 Assassins Creed PAL X360-Allstars = 3,206
Games/XBox360 Crackdown USA XBOX360-RANT [REGION FREE] = 2,873
Games/XBox360 Tom Clancys Rainbow Six Vegas USA XBOX360-NiG [REGION FREE] = 2,840
Games/PC-ISO Need For Speed Pro Street-RELOADED = 2,800
Games/PC-ISO Company of Heroes-LOADiNG = 2,705
Games/XBox360 Need For Speed Carbon XBOX-ProjectX = 2,700
Games/XBox360 Halo 3 XBOX360 FIX FOR CCCLX-iND = 2,692
Games/XBox360 Call Of Duty 4 USA XBOX360 = 2,662
Games/XBox360 BioShock-XBOX360-USA-DAGGER = 2,659
Games/XBox360 Grand Theft Auto IV MULTI5 PAL READNFO XBOX360-iCON = 2,618

By my calculations thats 25,285 PC games downloads and 42,103 Xbox 360 downloads for the top 20 most popular downloads. To ensure it wasn't a freak outcome of the front page I checked the next 4 pages of 20 each and all had more xbox360 games listed per page than PC games.

So piracy more rampant on the PC? Doesn't look that way actually...I think if anyone is going to make that claim from now on it should be backed by evidence such as the above.
 
Alot more rampant on PC. Use public trackers for real data.

Current torrent comparison:
platformco0.jpg


Doom 3 at release:
d3torrentszp3.jpg



Your original statement is correct:
Frostex said:
You can pirate console games almost as easy as PC games which really renders most of that incorrect.

Due to the nature of the platforms and their users I'd say that piracy is probably a whole lot less common on consoles, but honestly if that's the case and developers abandon the PC gaming market for the console one, the pirates are just going to follow and no doubt piracy will then boom there as well, and we'll be back to square one.
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The keyword is "almost" not only do console gamers need a PC (That's Step 1 to regular PC pirating) to pirate console games, they also need a console, and on certain occasions a mod chip, some of which require the user to manually solder onto their console. That's comparatively more difficult than the simplicity of normal PC pirating.
 
Frostex said:
So piracy more rampant on the PC? Doesn't look that way actually...I think if anyone is going to make that claim from now on it should be backed by evidence such as the above.
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First off, you're arguing something that I don't think anyone who takes an objective view on the situation actually believes -- it's incredibly, INCREDIBLY easy to torrent ISOs, mount em, and apply a crack to play a game. Second, you should most definitely be using a public tracker to show numbers, though in the end they're all flawed. Anyone can make numbers show what they'd like.

With consoles not only do you usually have to physically modify the console using parts sold separately (sometimes using a soldering iron, something that 95% of the population, even those with the soldering skills, wouldn't bother trying for fear of losing their warranty), but those modifications oftentimes stop functioning as the console developers can either lock you out of online play (as we've heard so much with the 360) or worse. With PCs, whats the worst thing that happens? You have to wait a few days for a new crack/mini-image/etc. to overcome the latest copy protection, with absolutely ZERO repercussions.

C'mon guys, I'm a DEDICATED PC gamer (with a Wii, but I find it as a nice compliment rather than substitute) and I think it's impossible to ignore the fact that piracy is far more rampant on PCs than on consoles. Sure it's very possible that developers are using it as a nice PR cop-out to swap focus to the more lucrative console platforms, and perhaps the effects of piracy are overblown; but in the end, it's fairly obvious that the barrier for entry in terms of pirating a PC game is drastically lower compared to the console crowd.
 
I disagree, I think public trackers are a worse representation of the statistics...

First of all they tend to lack availability that private trackers have, they also have lots of fake torrents, ones that are nuked (don't work correctly) and other issues. One thing that stands out is also the lack of total downloads as part of the data, only rather currently connected seeds/peers which you cannot use to guage popularity with due to the number fluctuating over time.

Private trackers are also far more common, there is only a handful of large public ones now, msot of them have been shut down, but there are a great many private trackers that aren't well know which still have many thousands of members, the one sourced has 40,032 currently active users (idle accounts are deleted)

I consider 40 thousand people a good sample size, especially when the liabry of torrents available to them is significantly larger than with public torrents.
 
#1 Noobs use torrents for anything beyond legit data.

#2 Piracy is rampant on consoles and PCs
 
quadnad said:
With consoles not only do you usually have to physically modify the console using parts sold separately (sometimes using a soldering iron, something that 95% of the population, even those with the soldering skills, wouldn't bother trying for fear of losing their warranty), but those modifications oftentimes stop functioning as the console developers can either lock you out of online play (as we've heard so much with the 360) or worse. With PCs, whats the worst thing that happens? You have to wait a few days for a new crack/mini-image/etc. to overcome the latest copy protection, with absolutely ZERO repercussions.
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Im sick of this...

Not all consoles need mods
Not all mods need to be solderd
There are places you can buy pre chipped consoles
There are places you can send your console to be chipped for you

Once you've chipped the console its plug and play

Conversly how hard is it to pirate PC games, well a great number of the releases, ESPECIALLY on public trackers might I add, are pretty bad, they require custom made tools to hide drives, at one point people had to disconnect IDE drives, had to tinker in the registiry, had to run external tools to mask your optical drive, then there was the whole thing with mini images etc.

If you read the comments on any public tracker you will find a great majorety of the comments are people asking how you use all the files, and being told they have to get yasu tools or some other crap and then they have to disable drives and yaddayaddayadda, half the people getting data from public trackers really don't know what they're doing and I have no doubt that a decent number of them never even get the game working in the end.

Once you've actually got your console chipped piracy isn't hard at all, some PC releases just don't plain work from the get go much less the average jo going inside his PC to disable optical drives and alike (ye old starforce days)

*edit*

I'd also like to point out (in case it's not already obvious) that I'm not trying to suggest that only 5000 people download a torrent, but it's the relative number of downloads of PC games compared to Console games that is important.

Per game it might even be more for the PC, although it seems consoles tend to have more games over time, either way it's not a massive gap like some people would have you believe, piracy is extremly rampant on consoles.
 
I just showed you a picture of over 26,000 torrents currently for PC at one of the public trackers. That's more than all of your console list combined, and over twice that of your PC/ISO list.

And what do all the stupid people who have no clue how to use the files have to do with it? If they don't know how to use an image file they sure as hell haven't the first clue how to pirate for console. PC games without a doubt are pirated much more than console games. But I also agree if they stopped developing PC games that everyone would just pirate for the console even more, just redirecting the problem.

Also take note, I know how much console games are being pirated, but it's still definately alot more rampant on PC. ;)
 
I'd love to continue to poke holes in arguments, but I honestly don't have the time (at work!) to pick apart sentence by sentence the issues I have. If anyone would like to honestly continue this conversation, feel free to PM me and I'll reply when I have a chance. Otherwise, lets let this thread get back on track.
 
PornoSatan said:
I just showed you a picture of over 26,000 torrents currently for PC at one of the public trackers. That's more than all of your console list combined, and over twice that of your PC/ISO list.
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Haha public trackers, and how many of them are dead, about 80% at a guestimate!

All the torrents I've listed are still alive (i.e have at least one seeder) there is also very little dupliaction on this tracker, games are only uploaded once unless the first one uplaoded has problems with the crack.

Compared to public trackers where the same game appears 4-5 times for each release (including all the dumbasses who just iso the disc and upload, and also including all the fakes and nuked)

If you need proof just refer to the doom3 release screenshot above of a whole page listed for the same game, this clear evidence of what I'm talking about, private trackers are an order of magnitude more organised and dont allow duplicates unless there's a good reason.

And what do all the stupid people who have no clue how to use the files have to do with it? If they don't know how to use an image file they sure as hell haven't the first clue how to pirate for console. PC games without a doubt at pirated much more than console games. But I also agree if they stopped developing pc gaming that everyone would just pirate for the console even more, just redirecting the problem even more.
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Because a stupid person may get frustrated trying to get a cracked pc game to work and eventually give up, they then may go on to simply buy the game. Again read the comments page for a torrent of a popular PC game release, it's PACKED with people who cannot get the crack to work, obviously the scale of the problem tends to relate to how bad or good the crack is. Again compared to a console, once it's chipped it's plug and play.
 
quadnad said:
I'd love to continue to poke holes in arguments, but I honestly don't have the time (at work!) to pick apart sentence by sentence the issues I have. If anyone would like to honestly continue this conversation, feel free to PM me and I'll reply when I have a chance. Otherwise, lets let this thread get back on track.
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Alright. :p

Frostex said:
Haha public trackers, and how many of them are dead, about 80% at a guestimate!

All the torrents I've listed are still alive (i.e have at least one seeder) there is also very little dupliaction on this tracker, games are only uploaded once unless the first one uplaoded has problems with the crack.

Compared to public trackers where the same game appears 4-5 times for each release (including all the dumbasses who just iso the disc and upload, and also including all the fakes and nuked)

If you need proof just refer to the doom3 release screenshot above of a whole page listed for the same game, this clear evidence of what I'm talking about, private trackers are an order of magnitude more organised and dont allow duplicates unless there's a good reason.



Because a stupid person may get frustrated trying to get a cracked pc game to work and eventually give up, they then may go on to simply buy the game. Again read the comments page for a torrent of a popular PC game release, it's PACKED with people who cannot get the crack to work, obviously the scale of the problem tends to relate to how bad or good the crack is. Again compared to a console, once it's chipped it's plug and play.
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If you want to claim that console piracy is rampant, then I agree with you. However, it's much much less rampant than its PC counterpart. Hell, all you can realistically pirate for a console system is games. For the PC you can pirate just about any software imaginable, including games. It's not JUST a gaming issue. And even it was, PC would still be winner.

I'm willing to bet most people who pirate for console already have done so for PC. Anyway, that's all I'm contributing to this thread. :)
 
pornosatan posted enough evidence. a counter-argument like 'those numbers are faked!' is laughable.

bottom line, its easier to pirate on a PC because no hardware mod is needed. its partly true that many console gamers just don't know how(which is a good thing), but the other part of the truth is people don't want to send in their new console to some strange company to get it modded, or they don't want to do any hardware mod. Or they don't want to get banned from xbox live.

It's just plain easier to pirate on the PC platform. combine that with the fact that console gaming is more popular than ever and has taken many PC gamers away from PC gaming, well then it's no surprise PC gaming is in a slump.

and I think hamidxa is convinced all you have to do is download an xbox360 game it will magically work on your console with no reprecussions. how ironic considering hes the one who said it's the console gamers who don't know how to pirate games.
 
PornoSatan said:
If you want to claim that console piracy is rampant, then I agree with you. However, it's much much less rampant than its PC counterpart. Hell, all you can realistically pirate for a console system is games. For the PC you can pirate just about any software imaginable, including games. It's not JUST a gaming issue. And even it was, PC would still be winner.

I'm willing to bet most people who pirate for console already have done so for PC. Anyway, that's all I'm contributing to this thread. :)
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I've clearly explained why I think public trackers are a bad example of the numbers, but no one has given good reason as to why the numbers i've shown might be inaccurate.

If piracy sooo much more rampant on the PC then why does exact number of downloads across a measure of 40,000 people (a decent sized sample) show that console game downloads are amongst some of the highest and account for more downloads overall due to the larger amount of games...

Simply stating that it's becaue it's a private tracker doesn't prove anything, there has to be some logical reasoning there.
 
The assumption is that the total number of downloads is the most relevant figure. Just because a platform has more total illegal downloads does not mean the problem is greater on that platform. The install base for console is bigger to begin with and as I understand it console games are generally more sought after. There are also more of them.

The more relevant number would be some valuation of lost revenue by the game developers and publishers, or what percentage of the install base is lost to piracy, per title. Crysis, for example, was intentionally or unintentionally targeted at an install base made up of computer game enthusiasts. Now they are saying that it wasn't worth doing because of piracy. We have no idea what impact piracy has on their bottom line. Basically it takes a bite out of what is already a niche market. Just because consoles can survive the piracy doesn't mean that the PC platform can.

The fact is I don't have actual data to cite, I don't work in the industry and I don't have time for that sort of research. But what I can tell you is that in enthusiast forums and online forums dealing with games, I am constantly tripping over pirates who are willing to admit that they pirate openly and do so with utter disregard of the potential consequences for the hobby. I have seen actual IT professionals do it without a second thought.

Piracy is not the only reason for the state of PC gaming, it may not even be the main reason, but enthusiasts should not be giving developers another reason to abandon the PC.

I am focusing on what developers are saying and what they are doing because ultimately that is the only thing that impacts me as a legitimate consumer of PC games.
 
Im hardly arguing that it makes pirating fine and dandy, I'm simply contesting this commonly thrown around claim that somehow piracy isn't an issue on console games, when it clearly is. There are massive amounts of downloads going on and while I'm not prepared to argue the exact nature of how this effects the bottom lines of both sides.

Piracy exists on consoles, and broadly speaking it's about as numerous as with the PC platform, it's just pc developers make more noise about it, yes the markets aren't the same and how this effects them will be different but that doesn't allow people to go making sweeping claims about how game specific piracy is so harder or so much less frequent for consoles, it's just not true.
 
Frostex said:
I've clearly explained why I think public trackers are a bad example of the numbers, but no one has given good reason as to why the numbers i've shown might be inaccurate.
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For example: private trackers will only show the more savvy users who bother to sign up for these things (or even know they exist). private trackers also tend to have certain focuses, depending on who is upping the torrents.
 
I don't see any imediately obvious strong link between savvy users and the odds of them downloading more console games. The particular tracker im quoting statistic from has every type of media available, it's not bias or limited in any way.
 
Frostex said:
I don't see any imediately obvious strong link between savvy users and the odds of them downloading more console games. The particular tracker im quoting statistic from has every type of media available, it's not bias or limited in any way.
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I see an obvious link behind a user who isn't savvy and instead googles for torrents when they hear a new game has arrived (i.e. something my parents are perfectly capable of doing). Savvy users would be the ones that bother to find groups and get invitations to sign up, and then track new releases from that group.

Every private track has an "opt in" approach. They only provide certain torrents, from certain seeders, and are therefore a subset of the overall universe.

There is no good way to measure it all accurately.
 
Seems like they could make alot of money from PC Gamers with a Xmas(2008) Buying season release date.
 
I think it will be released next year now. We would have heard something by now if it was coming out 4th quarter this year
 
spicey said:
I think it will be released next year now. We would have heard something by now if it was coming out 4th quarter this year
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Not necessarily.
Estimated announce date is August/September for a release by the end of 2008.
 
the word on the street is that gta iv will be out for pc on 6-9-09
 
Frostex said:
Because a stupid person may get frustrated trying to get a cracked pc game to work and eventually give up, they then may go on to simply buy the game. Again read the comments page for a torrent of a popular PC game release, it's PACKED with people who cannot get the crack to work, obviously the scale of the problem tends to relate to how bad or good the crack is. Again compared to a console, once it's chipped it's plug and play.
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you obviously dont know that only the Wii is chipable and the easiest to pirate. where as the xbox 360 is a little bit harder but still doable. Pirate with the ps3 hahahah. Ps2 and xbox were pretty much easy as hell but they stopped releasing good games on them.

Wii is the only current gen console that is easy ONCE it is chipped. the xbox 360 is a little bit harder to do. From day one microsoft designed the 360 to be almost impossible to hack/mod, they did this because of how easy it was to mod the first xbox.

Modding It got to a point where people copy their games onto the xboxes harddrive, then mod any of the game files from there. Some people thought that PC like games mods were finally on consoles, which is true. Alot of custom maps and such were made for halo 2. Not only were maps made but cheats too. Think Aimbots in counter-strike. now in halo 2 not only where there aimbot like mods but anything could be changed. The cheater could make his sniper rilfe fully automatic with unlimited ammo that could headshot you from across the map, oh and while flying around. Tho it was fun to beat the crappier modders in halo 2, alot of them were horrible players they were no match from a team of good players. That is why microsoft designed the 360 from the ground up to be hackproof. Of course they failed because people are making backup of 360 games.

With the 360, modders found that they could change the firmware on the dvd drive to be able to read burned games. The games cant just be poped into your pc and be easily burned. 360 games have security sectors on the game that the xbox need to read and to read these sectors games have to be read with a certain type of samsung dvd drive called a "kreon drive" modded with a custom firmware, that or have the 360 drive connected to the PC. The games need to be almost an exact copy to be viable, and burned onto a dual layer dvd. even then it sometimes wont work. If it does work, there is a chance of getting banned from xbox live. So downloading a 360 game from a torrent is pretty much a hit or miss and varying results for each person.

With the Ps3 it would be cheaper to buy the game. Blu-ray burners are like $300-400 and media only goes up to 25gb.

So plug and play pirating on the console? not with current gen one.
 
^ Hope you can wait the minimum of a year! Seriously though, why does Rockstar always wait at least a year before releasing GTA on PC? Piracy perhaps?
 
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