The PlayStation Holiday event
in Canada featured a number of third party publishers, such as Rockstar. Although they were focused primarily on
Manhunt 2, inquiring members of the press had to find out something new about
Grand Theft Auto IV. Well, it appears that
Gaming Excellence succeeded. The development team is considering having an open world from the very start of the game, breaking the long-running tradition of restricting player's freedom at first. Considering how massive the world of
GTA IV will be, would that immediate openness become too daunting?
More excitingly, however, is the addition of 16 player online multiplayer. Fans of the PSP
Grand Theft Auto games know that
GTA multiplayer can be quite fun, due to its variety of weapons and vehicles. More than simple deathmatch is planned, and that has us quite excited.
[Via
Digg]
{ Oct 16th 2007 at 3:30PM } 
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Titty Pink @ Oct 16th 2007 3:48PM
Lol. First again...
qwerter @ Oct 16th 2007 3:56PM
watch ill be third...? no second? >.
XanthouS @ Oct 16th 2007 3:58PM
@1 You're quite possibly the greatest person ever born.
On topic: This is some pretty fantastic news. Who would argue with the long delay if it means 16-player GTA online? Sounds like a fair trade to me.
Also, I'm interested to see how R* handles squeezing the entirety of Liberty City onto a single DVD9 to accommodate a certain other stone-age "next gen" system ;)
Ten Dolla Bill @ Oct 16th 2007 4:06PM
@3
Probably the same way they plan to get around the lack diversified RAM on your "next gen" system.
Haiddasalami @ Oct 16th 2007 4:21PM
@3 Wondering how they are going to fit it but well they will figure it out. Dont want to start a flame war. But this is will be the greatest sand box game of all time and a contender for best multiplayer experience.
G26-VERCETTI @ Oct 16th 2007 4:40PM
YEA YEA YEA GTAIV NEWS WOOOO, GREAT 16 PLAYER OH MAN IMA BE MURDERING ALL THEM 15 PLAYRS WHEN THIS BABY COMES OUT. GTAIV
LW @ Oct 16th 2007 4:22PM
@4.
The non-diversified RAM and limit of DVD9 both suck. RAM issues can be remedied by HD cache-ing though. The only workaround DVD9 size limit is extremely aggressive data compression/decompression, which will cause lag and more load times. Assassin's Creed already said they were having a hard time with the 360 DVD9 size limit, but they didn't say peep about having issues with PS3 RAM. I think that tells you all you need to know about which one is the larger problem.
LW @ Oct 16th 2007 4:25PM
Oh, and a firmware upgrade could allow the 256MB currently reserved for System memory to become available for applications too, it's not limited by the hardware. It's the OS that determines what goes in and out of RAM, not the hardware. No firmware upgrade is going to increase the size of DVD9.
Luke @ Oct 16th 2007 4:34PM
@6
I think another thing to add is that developers are not used to programing for the PS3 yet. This will be remedied with time. Nothing can be done for the dvd 9 problem, unless they started making games on HDVD's for xbox.
Michael C. Sherrin @ Oct 16th 2007 4:42PM
I'm most excited about the hinted at multiplayer mode where you chase down your friend, the criminal, or vice versa. I hope this is still happening. I think playing basically cops and robbers could be really fun.
******
Michael C. Sherrin
http://www.prodigeek.com/
Saffie @ Oct 16th 2007 5:14PM
*off-topic*
hahah... Death Kill City II rules. it has gangbangers, crooked cops, kunoichis, and mecha.
Andy @ Oct 16th 2007 5:49PM
Wouldn't it be great if you could create your own gangs(clans) and fight for turf in GTA?
That would be sweet.
Tim @ Oct 16th 2007 8:20PM
Good news this is. GTA SA had all locals unlocked at the beginning, the only thing was if you went to any of the places the story hadn't led you to yet you would get an immediate 5-6 star police wanted level.
I wonder if they will do that or do something like "Just Cause" where you literally can go everywhere at the beginning.
MP will hopefully be more than DM run and gun.
Autopsy15 @ Oct 16th 2007 9:40PM
@9
Caps Lock is Cruise Control For Cool!
Autopsy15 @ Oct 16th 2007 9:44PM
@9
Caps Lock is Cruise Control For Cool!
Autopsy15 @ Oct 16th 2007 9:45PM
Dammit! Stupid comment system!
G26-VERCETTI @ Oct 17th 2007 12:56AM
AUTOPU$$$Y15 lol quit commenting so much man, were all just happy 16 players and well i didnt want open areas at begining closed makes it fresher everytime. gtaIV
toby @ Oct 31st 2007 2:14PM
umm,...
16 player multi player...
might run into someone once every other day...
im skeptical about this
im guessing that each player online will be able to make there own gang,buy more members,buy better guns for there members,have gang turf.have allied,neutral,and rival gangs
and if you as a player "NOT UR MEMBERS"
kills another gang member
it will make that particular gang a rival gang
and if you meet with another gang leader you could be allowed to make them allied or some thing of that nature,
i read some stuff off of wiki
Multiplayer
Multiplayer in the game has been confirmed. However, it will not be an MMO, as Houser had previously suggested when citing Everquest as a source of inspiration.[citation needed] Multiplayer will be accessible from Niko's mobile phone[24] and will allow up to 16 players, with a possibility of open-ended gameplay and exploring the whole city.[25]
if only it were mmo styled play with 1000's of players
they would have my 10$s a month
but,i still think 16 players is still a little to weak
i mean at least make it 60 slots...
Major_Gonzo @ Dec 18th 2007 9:56AM
On GTA IV Multiplayer: Toby I think you have pretty high expectations, 'LW' is right. The hard/software to do what you are hoping just isn't available right now (the day that it does come they will get a lot more then $10 a day from me too! I would pay up to £10, $20 for a MMORPG version of GTA if they could work it out)
Apart from some random hack of GTA I played on the PC which permitted up to about 4 players in the full map (just no AI people or cars and full of bugs) made (apparently) but some unnamed person who worked on the game who wanted to show that it was possible the issue is that the GTA game engine has only ever been able to load the immediate environment, which the PS2 could do no problem. I suppose loading the whole of Liberty City all at once has been very tricky to get right (or maybe R* just held this back to give future GTA games another reason to buy) as this would put huge demands on any kind of system.
As the PS3 is so dam sexy a player running a multiplayer game needs to do is simply set up a game and act as the server to manage it all. I'm no programmer (and please feel free to correct me if you are) but I would be very surprised to see if the WHOLE of the game map would be available in multiplayer as I don't think even a dedicated PS3 server could handle that much.
I expect a multiplayer game would have a limited area of the map you could select in the game setup with various other configurations such as weapon load outs, game modes (like cops and robbers), and team games, etc;
In answer to XanthouS’s comment I having only local multiplayer games would be a disaster! How crap would that be?! Considering there is not to much difference in in the configuration of local / public games I don’t think this will be a problem.
Any thoughts?