It's been quite some time since we were as shocked and disappointed with a set of remasters as we were last November when the awkwardly named Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition landed in an absolute state on consoles and PC.
The collection, which should have been an easy victory for Rockstar Games, a simple refresh of one of gaming's truly great trilogies, instead arrived shot full of bugs, with serious performance issues and even a bunch of old developer comments and unlicensed music thrown in accidentally for good measure. It was, in short, a slapdash and rather disastrous scenario that eventually led to Rockstar having to go so far as to temporarily remove the collection from sale on PC. Not ideal.
So, it comes as something of a surprise to see that Take-Two CEO, Strauss Zelnick, has downplayed the messy launch, telling CNBC that the trilogy of games had actually done great for the company and that the problems were nothing more than "a glitch in the beginning." Hmmm. We certainly don't recall it being a mere glitch.
As first reported by VGC, Zelnick was questioned about the state of the games during an interview discussing the company's controversial take over of mobile publisher Zynga, saying that;
“With regards to the GTA trilogy, that was actually not a new title. That was a remaster of pre-existing titles...we did have a glitch in the beginning, that glitch was resolved. And the title of [sic] has done just great for the company.”
We get that Zelnick will undoubtedly have been looking to appease shareholders in playing down the issues with the recent remastered trilogy, but it's really not a great look when we all saw for ourselves that the games were absolutely not fit for purpose.
Check out the video below showing constant ridiculous issues in the game and tell us it was a simple glitch!
Do you think the remastered GTA trilogy was suffering from a minor glitch when first released or were your experiences more in line with ours? As always, let us know in the comments!
[source videogameschronicle.com]
Comments 7
I'm sure it did do well as they knew it was terrible, and so didn't send out review copies, and only put out a couple of promo shots.
This is the perfect example to disprove the "games need to be full of microtransactions as game development is too expensive now" argument. GTA V has made more money than any game, movie, or book in history. Billions upon Billions of dollars raked in. Yet they still threw out a low budget slapdash cash grab title just as if they were on the bones of their arse.
GTA fans don't benefit from the success only the executives.
We have devs and the heads of companies who are gamers. Now can we get some investors who are also gamers? I feel like the war on rich CEOs is slightly misguided. The real problem are these investors who constantly push for a product to come out early and unfinished then surprised pikachu face when it flops. Then everyone in the company runs around trying to appease them.
I wouldn't describe Grove Street as competent, but I don't think anyone could remaster all 3 titles and satisfy 2K's immovable release date. Game dev is hard, and that makes the business people's jobs hard as well, but a more realistic goal for both parties would have been remastering GTA3 first. Honestly I'd blame the business people, they should have split the trilogy into separate releases like they did Mafia and have another studio support Grove Street so they can get more experience. I bet they thought sales of a trilogy collection would be high so they ignored the logistics and hoped gamers would blame the developers.
@Vincent294 Mass Effect Trilogy shows you can do something of this scale in one go. The difference is they did it with love and care, and were given the time and budget to get it right. It didn't have to be one game at a time.
@themightyant Yeah, EA surprised me delaying it. GTA doesn't have the connection between the titles Mass Effect has, and 2K only delayed next gen GTA V. Still skeptical of GTA V's next gen patch but the GTA Online update was good. I don't play GTA Online anymore so I won't play it. I think the remaster was released this holiday to please shareholders with quick cash.
@Vincent294 I agree. Often there's a tendency to put blame on a studio, or even specific developers, but the truth is the industry is full of talented people criminally overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated.
They undoubtedly worked hard with what time and resources they had. While it may well be Grove Street overpromised, and under budgeted in the end Take Two wanted something to cash in on the anniversary.
Then when the GTA V Next Gen update wasn't ready for Christmas they needed something to fill the hole in the balance sheet. So whatever was ready was thrown out the door.
More remasters should launch in this state to put the community off demanding them over new games
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