GTA IV Release Officially Delayed

Rockstar Games recently announced in an official statement that the release date of Grand Theft Auto IV (until now Oct. 16, 2007 in America and Oct. 19 in Europe) has been postponed. The release is expected in the second quarter of the 2008 fiscal, or commercial, year.

Before anyone thinks that, in the worst case, the game would only come out at the end of June, let me quickly clear up the misconceptions. Every fiscal year begins on October 31 of the year before the one in its name (in this case that's October 31, 2007, at least for Rockstar), and a quarter lasts 3 months counting from then. Knowing all this, it currently looks like the fourth GTA will be released sometime between early February and the end of April 2008.

The following lines come from the official statement:

Take-Two has changed its strategy for the 2007 fiscal year, primarily by moving the release date of Grand Theft Auto IV, on both PLAYSTATION3 and Xbox360, from the 2007 fiscal year into the 2008 fiscal year. This change was necessary because the game's developers need more time to polish it to perfection. The planned release is possible in the second quarter of the 2008 fiscal year.

And below are the words of Strauss Zelnick, the head of Take-Two Interactive:

With GTA IV, R* is laying new foundations in next-generation video games. Several parts of the development are much more time-consuming than we had previously thought; for example, it is very hard to develop for two such different platforms in parallel. We realized that perfecting the game is vital, and I can assure everyone it will be worth the wait! We owe it to the game's multi-million-strong fan base, the enthusiastic development team, and our financiers and shareholders to guarantee that Grand Theft Auto IV will deliver an epoch-making gaming experience by taking full advantage of next-gen technology.

Although the news of the delay and the new release date haven't appeared on the official GTA IV site yet, the news can still be considered official, since the information is on Take2's official site. I don't think I need to spell out that my sadness is immeasurable, even if I know the developers and publishers only want to make their masterpiece even better. Somehow we'll survive these extra 4-6 months...

Link: Take-Two Interactive IR