I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we hear the exact opposite from someone else, but a few developers (that are remaining anonymous) say Sony’s PlayStation 4 has “significant” and “obvious” performance advantages over Microsoft’s Xbox One. The XB1’s graphics drivers as being were specifically addressed, with one developer calling them “horrible.” Another developer was a little more mild, saying Microsoft “has been late on their drivers and that has been hurting them.” Microsoft has previously addressed the way people were calculating the power of the two machines, saying it wasn’t accurate. The distinction with these developers is that they aren’t talking about calculated power, but their “platform-agnostic development build” is running with a higher framerate with higher resolution on PS4. If any of this is true, and you should read the original story at the Edge to judge for yourself, it likely won’t make much difference in most of the games you play. Third party developers will make their cross-platform games run as well as it can on the weakest machine. So PS4 owners may end up with a lesser game than what is technically possible, but it will still be a huge step up from what we’re playing now. First party developers may be able to leverage more out of the PS4, but I still doubt the differences will be that significant. Similar complaints were made about developing for the PS3 before the current consoles launched and time has only created more and more parity between it and the Xbox 360.
Volition’s Saints’ Row IV has strayed about as far from its GTA rip-off roots as it can (and succeeded quite well on its own merits anyway), but they clearly haven’t forgotten the Rockstars who inspired them. The next two DLC add-ons for the game are “GATV” and “Wild Wild West.” Both are available today for $2.99 each. “GATV” will include special Johnny Gat and Aisha clothing items along with some extra weaponry. While the anagram for that pack is obvious, the “Wild Wild West” pack is also clearly inspired by another Rockstar game that a few people played. That will include male and female Old West outfits, along with a revolver and shotgun.
Speaking of which, Grand Theft Auto V released today. After a few customers got their games from Amazon over the weekend, a few days early, Rockstar is “in the process of investigating early ‘sales’ to determine how and why that is occurring.” This happens all the time. And is it really a big deal? If anything doesn’t it encourage pre-sales from people thinking they might get it early? And aren’t pre-sales good? I’d rather sell a few copies early than lose sales if people start reading bad reviews first. Not that I expect, nor have found, many bad reviews for the game.
That said, the game seems to have some performance issues on Xbox 360. This only seems to be affecting those who install the game’s “play” disc to the hard drive. Rockstar is advising that players do not install this disc to their hard drives. If the noise of running from a disc on your older system bothers you too much, enterprising fans have found a workaround. It appears you can install the “play” disc to a USB drive instead of your hard drive. This gives you all the benefits of running discless, without texture issues and other performance problems.
If you like to expand your console gaming to your phone or tablet, the GTA V iFruit companion app is now available as well. With this app you can train Franklin’s dog, Chop, or customize vehicles while you’re away from the game. It’s niche, but sometimes you have to work and you don’t really want to leave your game universe to do it. Unfortunately, this is iOS only.
Not enough GTA for you? Can’t pick it up day one? Have PlayStation Plus? Starting today, GTA: Liberty City Stories (for PSP and Vita) is now free with the PS+ Instant Game Collection. If GTA isn’t your thing, you can pick up ICO instead. Machinarium is leaving the IGC.
That latest entry in Microsoft’s Games for Gold is also now available. From now to the end of September you can download Rainbow Six Vegas for free.
That’s all for the week’s early edition. Check back on Friday for more gaming goodness.