For months now (at least ever since the public release of the official San Andreas website), many GTA fans have been living by the pledge that Microsoft gamers and their mini-supersystem consoles wouldn’t be getting a taste of San Andreas for at least a year after the PS2 release.
It has caught our attention however, that an article in the Official XBox Magazine has been quoted as stating the following in relation to upcoming releases:
“[GTA San Andreas] may be coming to store shelves sooner than you think! According to one analyst’s interpretation of Take Two financial reports (the new holy grail of under-the-radar gaming information), the Xbox version of GTA: SA may race up as soon as Spring 2005. It was assumed by most that the Xbox version would come at least a year after the PS2 version – that’s what sony’s exclusivity deal with Rockstar entailed for GTA 3 and GTA: VC. But according to this analyst you could be busting caps on your Xbox a lot sooner than that. To which we say: word.”
Official XBox Magazine
This fits in well with a similar statement in Xbox World Magazine. Everything said and done, however, whether or not this is more than a rumor is yet to be seen. The well-known agreement between Take2Games and Sony, which became a hot topic last year with the release of the Double Pack (GTA3 and Vice City) on XBox, states that the PS2 system has exclusive rights to all initial Grand Theft Auto title releases.
Whether or not an early 2005 release on the XBox will infringe on the agreement has yet to be clarified.