14 DAY TRIAL // What's a big, hyped game launch without a few hiccups? After standing in long lines to get the game at midnight, some gamers returned home to discover that their copy of GTA IV, the most anticipated game of 2008, simply did not want to move past the opening cinematic. And then the flaming began.
As always, a minority can make a product look bad just because of some issue which is hard to reproduce, and even harder to pin down by the developers. A quick read of the technical issues forum posts related to GTA IV will show you that the most pressing issue which is pushed to the attention of developer Rockstar and publisher Take Two is the opening screen lockup. Various people have proposed reinstalls as a solution, but that does not seem to work on most systems. Wiping the hard drive of the console and then reinstalling the game doesn't do the trick either.
The problem seems to affect both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 gaming consoles, with the Sony console with the 60 GB hard drive being reported as the most common offender. So far, Rockstar and Take Two have declined official comment regarding the issue.
Kotaku has contacted Rockstar support and got little information out of the call. Apparently, the problem is limited and only affects a fraction of the gamers that have bought GTA IV. But small as it is, it seems to be rather stubborn and even though the tech people at Rockstar are working around the clock for a fix they really haven't pinpointed what's wrong until now. Although the tech support guys seemed to be very helpful, they could offer little in the way of real advice in solving the freeze issue.
So at this point, for all those affected, it's pretty much a waiting game. Rockstar and Take Two have a history of quickly dealing with such issues that could lead to less than favorable sentiments from gamers, so we hope that in the next couple of days a fix for the freeze problems will be out.