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The Courts Government Entertainment Games News

Take Two/Rockstar Reveals Plans, Designer Sues Over GTA 83

Posted by simoniker from the very-unlikely dept.
Thanks to Yahoo for reprinting the latest financial results of videogame publisher Take Two/Rockstar, including much information on new titles and plans. The company has announced Red Dead Revolver, "a stylish, western themed, gun-fighting extravaganza" for PS2/Xbox which was originally created for Capcom before developers Angel Studios became Rockstar San Diego and the project was handed over. Also noted is the "expected March release of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City... in Japan", after the licensed-to-Capcom GTA 3 "has sold approximately 300,000 copies... making it one of the most successful debuts of a Western video game in Japan." The company also announced the return of the Army Men franchise on their budget Global Star label, following the dissolution of creator 3DO earlier this year. However, there are also a few issues, as the SEC are unhappy with previous financial dealings, and "plan to recommend civil action against the company for alleged accounting violations", and elsewhere, a Scottish game designer has filed a suit claiming he, uncredited, inspired the design of the Grand Theft Auto series.
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Take Two/Rockstar Reveals Plans, Designer Sues Over GTA More

Take Two/Rockstar Reveals Plans, Designer Sues Over GTA

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  • so.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by The Other White Boy ( 626206 ) <theotherwhiteboy.gmail@com> on Thursday December 18, 2003 @12:53PM (#7755152)
    ..the guy invented the concept of warring street gangs? i guess then its only fair that the filmmakers from The Warriors sue him for prior art. =)

  • Just what the gaming community needs... (Score:3, Funny)

    by -kertrats- ( 718219 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @01:00PM (#7755234) Journal
    More Army Men games. Perfect.
    • Ah the Army Man "franchise"... if you want to call it that. It's not like it's worth anything. In the dozen or more titles they've produced, there wasn't a single good one. The series has an awful reputation and why anyone would want to revisit it just demonstrates the rather sorry creative state of video games today.

  • Carmack suing all FPS developers... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Numeric ( 22250 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @01:05PM (#7755269) Homepage Journal
    Carmack said: "All your FPS Belong to Me"

  • Why does the Cube get screwed? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gizzmonic ( 412910 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @01:14PM (#7755337) Homepage Journal
    Even if Rockstar doesn't want to bother with the costs associated with porting and publishing, why don't they sell the code to someone else? It would make money among those of us who don't want to fork out several hundred dollars in the form of a new console, new controllers, memory cards, etc just to play GTA.

    Forget that "it's not financially viable" bullshit. GTA would make money. Tony Hawk made money on the Dreamcast and even the N64 (where Tony Hawk 2 was released just months before the Gamecube).

    The problem is, Rockstar is just too fucking greedy. They take bribes out the ass from Sony to keep GTA PS2-only, while taking bribes from Microsoft to port the game over to Xbox. Way to go, Rockstar...you found a clause in your contract that lets you screw everybody. And take all their money.

    Wait, all of a sudden, I don't want GTA anymore at all. Fuck those asstards for taking an old idea and humping it dry, then demanding bribes just to put it on their platform. They think they're hot shit now? Shit, there's plenty of imitators out there- I'll just buy True Crime or Simpsons Hit & Run for Gamecube and get the same experience. But first, I'm gonna get really drunk and pee all over the GTA Vice City logo at EBGames. Fuck you Rockstar, I hope Santa shits in your stocking!

    • Re:Why does the Cube get screwed? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think the problem is that the GameCube disks just don't hold enough information. Each one holds about 1.5 gigs, right? But if GTA III and/or Vice City are larger than 1.5 gigs, the game will have to be spread over multiple disks. Sure, it's possible to separate each island/area to a single disk, but there is one problem. The problem is that there are graphics and sounds that have to be used in all islands/areas, this means that all disks must contain a copy of all those radio stations and all the grap
      • although i agree with you.

        1. final fantasy is a PS title
        2. GTA Vice City fits in under 2 PC CD ROMs AFAIK given most CD are 700 or 1.4 GB 1.5GB CD that gamecube has
        3. games are getting close enough to need multiple DVDs!!! FUCK! Final Fantasy XI on PS2 comes pre-installed on the HD why?
        a. people don't want to install games.
        b. it's too big. it took 5 PC CD ROMs and 2.5 hrs of updates on cable/dsl

        so yes multiple disks are "difficult" for developers to handle but they've done it before.
        • Just for the record, min spec (according to ebgames.com) for GTA:VC PC is 915MB of hard disc space +635MB additional if your video card does not support DirectX texture compression. It should be obvious that the Gamecube would not support DirectX anything. This is already above the magic 1.5GB limit strictly for storage. It can be assumed that at the min spec some info streams off the disc even on PC. Has anyone done a full install of VC that can give a precise amount? It would be (presumably) extremel
          • Just for the record, min spec (according to ebgames.com) for GTA:VC PC is 915MB of hard disc space +635MB additional if your video card does not support DirectX texture compression. It should be obvious that the Gamecube would not support DirectX anything.

            Everything else aside, DirectX texture compression isn't the only kind of texture compression. The Gamecube supports S3TC, specifically.

          • It would be (presumably) extremely difficult to do GTA as a multidisc since (presumably) the map streams from the disc. There would be a point in the city where crossing the street meant switching discs. Ugh.

            More than likely they could cut between discs when moving from city to city, just as GTA:VC and GTA3 on the PS2 gives you loading screens between cities (and between missions). If you line up your content so that a disc switch happens in the same place as a major loading point on the PS2, it's not as
            • Isn't having to swap at all an unacceptable compromise? I mean, if the game was bigger than oh say 8GB I guess swapping would be ok, but lets not make it alright when the game is less than 2GB.
              • Isn't having to swap at all an unacceptable compromise?

                Unacceptable? On consoles? Not really. I still have plenty of games that I have to swap discs on because they're over 650MB.

                On the other hand, if this were a PC we were talking about, I'd agree, because the PC has a hard drive and, if I choose the largest installation option, I shouldn't have to swap discs while I'm playing.

                I mean, if the game was bigger than oh say 8GB I guess swapping would be ok, but lets not make it alright when the game is
          • It should be obvious that the Gamecube would not support DirectX anything.

            And the PS2 does? I somehow doubt the PS2's OS and Graphics Sythesizer are DirectX compliant.

            Besides, the GC utilizes mostly OpenGL, which is a hell of a lot less bloated than DirectX. Most DirectX comands and code are 3x the size of the same OpenGL code.

            PS2 to XBOX is less of a problem because no "optimizing" needs to take place just to make it run.

            Proof? The PS2 uses prorietary graphics programs and OpenGL, not DirectX

        • 1. final fantasy is a PS title

          Which he said, though I think you might be thinking of FF1 being on a single CD with FF2. He was most likely referring to FFVII, VIII, and IX, which are multi-CD titles on the PS1 and still took up enough space to be multi-disc titles on the GameCube, if it weren't for the amount of duplication between discs.

          2. GTA Vice City fits in under 2 PC CD ROMs AFAIK given most CD are 700 or 1.4 GB 1.5GB CD that gamecube has

          Most CDs are 650MB, but that's beside the point. You also
          • At the same time, PC developers seem quite reluctant to move to DVD-ROM format, as they seem to believe that the same gamers that spend $400 on video cards won't spend $40 on a DVD-ROM drive.

            I always thought that was a bit strange also. Most games come on 1-2 CD's, with a few coming in at 3. Very few have 4 or more (a couple notable examples would be Myst III: Exile, and Buldar's Gate). I believe Buldar's Gate had a separate version available for DVD, but I'm not sure about Myst III. My only assumption i
            • I always thought that was a bit strange also. Most games come on 1-2 CD's, with a few coming in at 3. Very few have 4 or more (a couple notable examples would be Myst III: Exile, and Buldar's Gate). I believe Buldar's Gate had a separate version available for DVD, but I'm not sure about Myst III. My only assumption is that either they're concerned about too few consumers having DVD drives, or the cost to create DVD disks is higher than I would expect.

              Most of the titles using the engine from Baldur's Gate
              • Something else that people still don't seem to understand is that DVD-ROM drives are perfectly capable of reading CD-ROM discs.

                AND, DVD-RW (or DVD+RW) drives are perfectly capable of writing CD-R's and CD-RW's. I can't even count the number of times people have asked me that...

                I agree with everything you said. I didn't realize all the new Dell's come with DVD drives... are they standard?
                • I didn't realize all the new Dell's come with DVD drives... are they standard?

                  They are, as I said, except on the lowest-priced PCs. Even then, it costs about $30 to upgrade to a 16x DVD-ROM drive from the 48X CD-ROM drive (and they're putting CD-RW drives in there for the second drive for XMas).
        • 2. GTA Vice City fits in under 2 PC CD ROMs AFAIK given most CD are 700 or 1.4 GB 1.5GB CD that gamecube has

          One last thing that nobody has mentioned yet: Because games get installed on the PC hard drive, the information on PC game CDs can be heavily compressed. While there are forms of compression that can be done on consoles, game developers can't use as much because the decompression can cause extended load times (which tend to frustrate people as it is) and eat up clock cycles if decompressing on the

          • Compressing the data on the disc would make console games load faster. It takes very little time to decompress data compared to the time it takes to read it off a disc.

            Also, standard practice on the Cube (at least among decent developers) is to simultaneously load data while playing cutscenes. Take Eternal Darkness - no noticable load time other than when you first start playing. Turn the volume down during a cutscene, and you'll hear the laser moving back and forth rapidly between two sections of the disc
      • Umm... at least for GTA3, the game takes up 450MB on my HDD, and has a play CD that's around 600MB. If anything, the GC version would be smaller, since textures & movies don't need the same resolution they do on the PC.
    • Come on Gizzmonic, tell us how you really feel.
    • Rockstar is in business to make a profit. If they can make more money via contracts with Microsoft and Sony to *not* publish on the Gamecube then they can otherwise, then that's what they'll do. I'm sorry you feel left out, but as you pointed out, there are at least a few options for GC owners to get a GTA-like experience.
    • Have you even stopped for a second to consider it may have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Rockstar? That maybe it was Nintendo refusing to port the title over? Or have we forgotten that Nintendo generally likes to keep family friendly games on their console, and not ones that are generally controversial and sponsor random violence?

      And no, there's no basis for fact in anything I just said. I'm just reading in between the lines here.
      • Nintendo doesn't have anything to do with porting the game. You pay Nintendo money to make your discs, and they make them for you.

        In case you haven't noticed, Resident Evil is exclusive to the Cube. Nintendo bought Silicon Knights upon seeing Eternal Darkness, and then made it a Cube exclusive. True Crime is out on the Cube.

        Nintendo got over the "family friendly games only" phase after the original Mortal Kombat bombed for the SNES. Just because Nintendo doesn't create games with random violence doesn't
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I didn't bother refuting the Xbox part. That part is public knowledge. Sony paid to keep it exclusive. As far as my nintendo comments go, refer to the part where I said the word controversial. GTA is definately that. Name the last title you saw nintendo publish that had that particular word associated with it. And Nintendo very much does get a say in what gets published for their system. They still keep a far tighter reign over what comes out than any of the other console manufacturers. And go ahead

        • Re:Why does the Cube get screwed? (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Good Lord, you're fucking stupid. I feel like I'm talking to an animated piece of feces, but here goes.

          Name the last title you saw nintendo publish that had that particular word associated with it.

          Haha, you know you're gonna get blasted for bringing up the kiddy bullshit because it's so wrong. So you resort to an even more specious "controversial" label. How many video games are controversial, anyway?

          Nintendo ALLOWED several companies to publish "controversial" games on the 'cube. Remember BMX XXX

      • Eternal Darkness, Conker, Resident Evil (still violent, check the rating it's M). Nintendo immediately tried to shake the family image when the gamecube came out. Take a look at the commercials and advertisements: While they aren't violent like the stupid N-Gage commercials, they aren't trying to be happy either (either wierd of "hip" if you ask me) Nintendo, as the smallest member of this system war, probably realizes that they're fighting an uphill battle. On top of that, GTA does extremely well on other
    • Wait, all of a sudden, I don't want GTA anymore at all.

      My god, you don't have any of the GTA games yet? Where do you live, the moon?

    • Gamecube disks hold only roughly 1.5GB of data. Here is what a quick scan of the GTA3 and GTA:VC DVDs for the PS2 claim under some disc scanning:

      • GTA3: 4 640 997 376 bytes
      • GTA:VC: 4 667 004 928 bytes

      I think you have your reason right there as to why there isn't a GameCube version of either title.

      If you want to blame someone for this, blame Nintendo -- in an era when their competitors were releasing consoles that could handle ~8GB discs, they came out and released a console that can only handle ~1.5GB

      • The reason these disks seem so full is because of a little trick used to make games load faster. While the angular speed of the disk is the same no matter where you read it, it's the linear speed that's important. And the further out from the center you are, the faster the linear speed is. So, basically, the further out on the disc you are, the faster it loads.

        So what they do is, they usually include a big, empty dummy file which they will put at the beginning of the disc. This pushes all of the import

        • I can buy that, although I can't find such a file on the GTA:VC disc.

          However, the audio alone takes up roughly 2.4GB of space on the PS2 disc. This could, admittedly, probably be compressed to save space, however it still appears to me that when you include the cutscenes, models, and other media data for the game, it still takes far more than 1.5GB of space on the PS2 disc.

          I would say that the GameCube disc size is at the very least a big disincentive to porting a game like GTA:VC to the GameCube.

          Yaz.

          • I think that the only disincentive to porting the game to the 'Cube that's worth worrying about is the exclusivity deals that Rockstar signed, that Sony and Microsoft paid for.

            Anything else is just mindless rationalization.

            --Jeremy
            • Er no. Not really. If the game is going to be technically difficult to convert (like for example, if they have to think carefully about what can be removed or compressed to make it fit) then Rockstar might want to look very carefully about whether it's worth their while.

              IIRC the exclusivity deals had time limits ... so that is unlikely to be the only reason, and suggesting that the GC's smaller disc might be a factor is certainly not "mindless rationalization" as you (rudely) put it.

    • Though the disc size limitation mentioned by other people is a good reason, how about also the fact that various Nintendo representatives keep bad-mouthing the GTA series? Silicon Knights do it all of the time in online interviews, Miyamoto has done it several times (including at big conferences), etc. Why would Rockstar help out a company that keeps trying to publicly cut it down?
      • Why would Rockstar help out a company that keeps trying to publicly cut it down?

        Yeah, they'd never release a GTA game to any Nintendo platform... er wait, it's coming to the GBA.

        It seems more likely that Take Two/Rockstar are figuring that the GC is the 'kiddy' console, and thus wouldn't see very healthy sales on it. Which may or may not be correct in the sale part, since games like Eternal Darkness sold horridly, even though they were critically acclaimed.

        The Resident Evil remake and 0 sold over a

    • Even if Rockstar doesn't want to bother with the costs associated with porting and publishing, why don't they sell the code to someone else? It would make money among those of us who don't want to fork out several hundred dollars in the form of a new console, new controllers, memory cards, etc just to play GTA.

      Time to get with the program champ! There are 3 other systems on which you can play the GTA series. Chances are if the computer your posting on was built within the last two or three years even it

      • They hold roughly 1.5gb, the current GTA is upwards of 4gigs, you want a 3+ disc game?

        I don't know about GTA3, but GTA:VC for the PC comes on just two discs...well under 1.5GB.
    • OK - GTA3 and GTA:VC started out as Sony exclusive titles. This made Rockstar lots of money, and because Rockstar are a business they took it. Being paid only to release games for the most popular console (by a huge margin) is a good deal.

      Later on GTA3 and GTA:VC were ported to the PC. This took a lot of work but was worthwhile because the PC is a huge market.

      The XBox is 733Mhz PC in a black and green box. Thus porting the game to this platform required relatively little extra work over the PC version.

    • 'Forget that "it's not financially viable" bullshit.'

      No bullshit here. The significant technical questions of getting GTA3 onto the Cube almost certainly outweigh the benefits they could get. Cube owners without either of the other current consoles are not a big market (as dire sales of multiplatform GC titles demonstrate on a regular basis), and Cube-only owners who want to play GTA3 are probably even smaller.

  • Has anyone heard of or seen 'Crime Inc'? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by @madeus ( 24818 ) <slashdot_24818@mac.com> on Thursday December 18, 2003 @01:17PM (#7755364)
    Has anyone hear of or seen Crime Inc, the game this guy developed?

    (or was it just some personal project that was never released publically?)
    • You should RTFA (yeah, I know - I'm new to Slashdot, am I?). The guy showed his work in a job interview for a company that later become Rockstar.

      However, I agree with you in a sense... the game wasn't known to the general public. Besides, I thought game "concepts" or "gameplay" or whatever couldn't be patented. As many other posters said, should we expect all FPS makers being sued by John Carmack? It doesn't make any sense.
      • It's not that they copied his game. He's saying they took idea from the work he submitted to them as part of the interview, and kept...then used the ideas in that game to make GTA. Of course, why he'd wait 6 years after the launch of GTA to bring this up is anyone's guess.
        • I think you're reading *WAY* more in to this than required. I worked at DMA and they were never very tight on keeping track of resume's received and demo disks. In the early years, there was talk of a game that goes along the lines of somehow hurting sheep. This was a David 'Oz' Osbourne idea. This is what, I understand, eventually morphed in to GTA.
      • I did read the article, and by which I mean actually read it, not skimmed it and inferred meaning into it. :P

        That he showed it in a interview as 'an example of his practical ability' has no bearing on whether or not it was actually released (where possible, I show released and public examples of my software when in interviews).

        The article simply says this about it:

        His game, Crime Inc, which was developed between 1991 and 1993, involved gangs taking part in street crime.

        It does not actually indicate if

      • Unnecessarily harsh (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cgenman ( 325138 )
        Right, but nobody at the company remembers him or has any record of him, so that can't be taken as evidence. Google searches yield nothing, and Moby [moby.com] has never heard of him. For a computer consultant, he keeps a very low profile.

        While game concepts can't be patented, games can be copyrighted. Think "K.C. Munchkin." Overly derivitave games can and will be shot down in court. But does Gallager have a case? Grand Theft Auto, a sprite-based top-down shooter, looked like [gta247.com] most of the other games out there at

  • If only he got a software patent... (Score:3, Funny)

    by qbproger ( 467459 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @01:26PM (#7755434)
    this would be an open and shut case, and no one would ever be able to make a video game about crime. But who needs choice?
  • you left out some main titles:

    Manhunt on PC and Xbox next year, along with a new Grand Theft Auto game. The GBA will also get a GTA game. A release date for Duke Nukem Forever (late 2004, early 2005) was mentioned during the investors conference call but of course officially it will still come out "when it's done".

  • more people to sue (Score:4, Funny)

    by obsid1an ( 665888 ) <{moc.ishcm} {ta} {naidisbo}> on Thursday December 18, 2003 @02:36PM (#7756107)
    This guy might want to be careful. The Haitians and the relatives of anyone who has been killed by some kid with a gun might sue him too.
  • His game, Crime Inc, which was developed between 1991 and 1993, involved gangs taking part in street crime.
    In related news, EA/Bullfrog has sued Mr Gallagher, of Queen Margaret Drive, Glasgow. Bullfrog claims the plot, look, structure and style of his game Crime, Inc. closely resembles that of Syndicate, a game they shipped in November of 1993.

  • Take 2 is a billion dollar company now... (Score:3, Informative)

    by cdneng2 ( 695646 ) on Thursday December 18, 2003 @04:16PM (#7757070)

    It's interesting to note that Take Two has net sales over the BILLION dollar mark [gamesindustry.biz].

  • ...even if it was legit, it seems like it would pertain to GTA and GTA2, Rockstar could easily claim (I'd think) that the 3D makeover divorces it from any code this guy handed his interviewer. And GTA3's success was certainly not built on top of those two games, which were moderate sellers at best.
  • "a Scottish game designer has filed a suit claiming he, uncredited, inspired the design of the Grand Theft Auto series."

    And I'm sure this has absolutely no relationship with Sega sueing Fox regarding the Simpson's Hit and Run game.

    Rockstar = Who to sue in the game industry for easy publicity

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