It seems like that happens at every end of every console's life. Last of Us, BioShock Infinite, and GTA V are three fantastic games to close out the PS3.
> While both games were developed for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the team were able to render the world of Grand Theft Auto V with greater detail than in Grand Theft Auto IV because they had become familiar with the hardware over time. Art director Aaron Garbut opined that while the aging hardware of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 were tiring to work with, "I think one of the most amazing features is the way we handle lighting in the game to maintain a consistent look despite the constraints on realistic lighting and shadows on current hardware", he explained.[28] Vice president Dan Houser agreed with this sentiment, explaining that working on Grand Theft Auto IV with relatively new hardware was difficult, but "now we know what the hardware's capable of, so it's become a lot easier to move things along and a lot more fun, too".
eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_specificatio...
A whopping 512mb of RAM to run GTA 5
I picked up my 360 in the launch month, and it's still running eight years later. Have to give them credit for that as I've put a lot of miles on the system.
Wow, I have had like 4 consoles, 2 original, elite and finally the slim. All but the slim RROD, to still have your launch edition is mighty impressive!
My experience was that the RROD issues were sorted out well before the elite and slim 360s (worked in GameStop), so it's surprising you had problems with those versions.
So it's too early to "close out the PS3" IMHO.
It will however eventually release on PC and generate a nice chunk of change over a few years at various price points.
No game in the history of ever has sold as many copies on Xbox 360 or PS3 as GTA V just has either, no? ;-)
That said, I think I agree with the inferred point that simultaneous PC release wouldn't have had a huge impact on revenue.
Several blockbusters, such as Call of Duty, have sold more on consoles than GTA V currently has, just not on day 1.
It sucks that every major game lately is just made for the lowest common denominator and then if we are lucky, we get a half assed PC port. Dear god what a mess GTA IV was and how many patches it took to actually get it to a workable state.
I still wait on a studio that actually takes enough pride in their work to develop something that really pushes the envelope of PC gaming. You could take that then and show even the "Next Gen" consoles what actually is possible nowadays if you don't go for the bargain basement.
Could be the reason they don't, but I expect piracy is the main reason it's not on the PC yet.
You do often see tech demos of engines that show of what can be done, but you develop for the market, which is the same for most technology (cough Internet Explorer cough)
Which brings us back to: Piracy is a market failure, not a cultural failure.
Of course, theft and copyright infringement are not directly comparable, being quite different concepts.
'Piracy' was defined as copyright violation by the copyright holders, not by general usage.
Therefore, we should fight that usage, just to compensate the balance.
That's exactly how language is defined; by popular usage, not by design.
Look at Watch Dogs. Another open world hacker-esque game and it's coming out on consoles and PC on the same date. Rockstar are a much bigger company with more resources and bigger budgets to develop for multi-platforms. They are a console oriented company, but I remember when GTA was much bigger on PC than any console back in the 1,2 and 3 days especially.
Well, put it this way. If there are plans for next gen, we'll definitely get a PC person as they are effectively the same in many ways.
The idea that the PS3 has some sort of huge advantage is mostly Sony propaganda, and people who don't get that "Cell" doesn't mean something magic that makes everything faster, it means something more like "overoptimized for a particular use case" that only makes certain very narrow tasks faster.
Now I can finally justify this point I've made before with this: There is a reason the PS4 is fleeing the Cell architecture just as fast as its metaphorical feet can take it. If companies, like politicians, weren't obligated to put on a public facade that says they never make mistakes, they would admit that it was an error and never really panned out the way they hoped (to say nothing of what they claimed!). As it is, if you read in between the lines a bit in this presentation, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHXrBnipHyA , the PS4 lead came about as close as he politically could to admitting it. (Props to him. The PS4 is looking really solid to me, and I think that is essentially 100% because of this guy.)
It could be that there is so much PS3 specific tricks in there it just wouldn't work.
I played this yesterday (I don't own a console) at a friends house and what they've been able to achieve on these consoles is impressive considering these consoles aren't next gen and are resource limited.