This is an IGN opinion piece from Ryan McCaffrey, who worked at Official Xbox Magazine from 2002-2012 during the original Xbox and Xbox 360 era before joining IGN, where he remains “the Xbox guy.” In the run-up to Xbox’s 25th anniversary, he’ll be sharing his memories from the platform’s first quarter-century.
As the hugely anticipated release of GTA 6 is now just over two months away, it’s worth remembering how it wasn’t so long ago that the Grand Theft Auto games were PlayStation exclusives. GTA 3 and Vice City didn’t see the light of day on the original Xbox until November of 2003 when the pair shipped as the GTA Double Pack, meaning that GTA 3 was exclusive to PS2 for two years and Vice City for one. San Andreas, meanwhile, hit Xbox in June of 2005, a comparatively short eight months after its initial PS2 release.
The point is, when then-Head of Xbox Peter Moore – easily the best showman that’s ever run the Xbox business – rolled up his sleeve to reveal a “tattoo” of the Grand Theft Auto IV logo on his bicep at E3 2006 and announce that not only would Rockstar’s next-gen GTA ship day-and-date on the Xbox 360, but that Xbox would get not one but two timed-exclusive expansion packs (which later turned out to be the excellent The Lost and Damned and the absolutely sublime The Ballad of Gay Tony), it was the biggest of big deals. Microsoft cut Rockstar a $50 million check for the privilege, but it was worth it. At least to Xbox 360 gamers, many of whom had invested in Microsoft’s first-to-market HD Era next-gen console after its incredibly strong out-of-the-gate showing with games like Call of Duty 2, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, and Fight Night Round 3 all being verified next-gen powerhouses before the E3 2006 Xbox press conference – and before the PS3 even shipped.
Microsoft had gotten off to a huge start (as Moore used to say, “The first one to 10 million wins”), and with this GTA 4 deal, the company had shown that it was standing behind the millions of gamers who had “jumped in” with the Xbox 360 in its early days. Xbox 360 gamers wouldn’t be second-class citizens when it came to the industry’s biggest franchise.
And when GTA 4 finally got released in April of 2008 (after a delay from Fall 2007), it was, of course, a from-the-ground-up masterpiece that shared nothing in common, technologically speaking, with the GTA 3 trilogy. It took us back to Liberty City, albeit a completely reimagined one that looked incredible and was packed with small details and stuff to do. It is, in my humble opinion, the funniest of all of the satirically brilliant GTA games, as it featured the hilarious in-game internet (accessible at internet cafes…remember those?), memorable characters like Brucie, and laugh-out-loud in-universe TV shows like “The Men’s Room.”
Speaking very personally, it also came out very shortly after I got divorced, and I have really meaningful memories of my best friend Robert flying up from Arizona right after it came out to keep me company and enjoy the game with me. There was no GTA Online back then, of course, so we’d just pass the controller back and forth, each reveling in (and laughing along with) the crazy antics of the person with the gamepad in their hand. We must’ve put a few dozen hours into GTA 4 in the few days he stayed with me, and I’ll always associate GTA 4 with a much-needed bit of fun and levity and friendship in a moment when I needed it most.
Later, as I mentioned, The Lost and the Damned dropped (and stayed exclusive to Xbox for over a year), and its focus on the biker gang of the same name was a super cool pivot on the typical GTA formula. And later still, The Ballad of Gay Tony (a six-month Xbox 360 exclusive) featured impeccable storytelling and character work by Rockstar; heck, I’d personally rank it among the best DLCs or expansions for any game, ever. And then at the tail end of the Xbox 360 generation we got GTA 5…though sadly no single-player DLC at all, as originally promised, let alone exclusive DLC.
Anyway, I’d argue that GTA 4’s simultaneous release on Xbox 360 and subsequent exclusive DLC might’ve been where the Xbox brand peaked from a cultural perspective. You had to have an Xbox 360 – if not for the killer lineup of games it already had, then for the exclusive GTA 4 expansions. It was right up there with the release of Halo 3 in 2007. In fact, Fall of 2007 – which saw the release of Halo 3, Mass Effect, BioShock, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Rock Band, and Assassin’s Creed – through GTA 4’s release in April of 2008 might be the best six-or-so-month run any console has ever had.