Rockstar: The establishment fears progress

Monday 28th April 2008 - 17:00

GTA IV developer believes it suffers unfair criticism, Nintendo say's no to price cuts and Top Spin 3 DS screens

Just hours before the dramatic midnight launch of GTA IV, quite possibly the most eagerly awaited video game arrival of a generation and Rockstar is already on the defensive. In an interview with The Times, Rockstar North's president Leslie Benzies has said that some games critics are displaying a "fear factor" about social progress.

On Manhunt 2, a game that has faced heavy criticism and attempts to ban it worldwide due its graphic content, Benzies said: "We wanted to make a horror game that would scare you in the same way a film would," he said. "It doesn't seem to me to be any worse than a film. If it's a film or a book, you can do what you want. We seem to be in a different category."

Inevitably, Benzies is apprehensive of the mainstream backlash that awaits GTA IV - regardless of the plaudits it receives from gamers and the specialist press. "There is a big fear factor here," Benzies said. "It's the coming of the railways, it's Elvis shaking his hips. It's cars going over 25 miles per hour and making people explode. "We've had such a beating over the past three years. If I get into a confrontation about it, once I've had my beating, I ask if they've ever played the game. Invariably they haven't."

We certainly can't wait to get our hands on what promises to be the definitive crime caper for consoles. Even if we have to ram raid a copy if our review version doesn't turn up soon!

Meanwhile more news from Nintendo - but not particularly pleasing to the hard-up gamer. In a press conference last Friday Saturo Iwata, Nintendo's president, underlined the importance of their products holding value. Speaking after the company's record financial results, Iwata said:"Our earnings projection for the year is not based on hardware price cuts, and I don't think we are going to need them."

So unlike the Xbox 360 and PS3 there doesn't seem to be any Nintendo strategy to compete with the other systems in the price war stakes. And why would it need to? When the veteran games manufacturer sold more than 700,000 Wii consoles in one month, in the US alone, it hardly needs to worry about market share.