The week in review

Wow. What a busy week. I’m going to just do sort of a link dump here, with additional comment exclusive to you Command-K subscribers. Premium stuff, and worth every penny you pay for it. This should also mark the resumption of regular blogging, now that I have a couple days to breathe and collect my thoughts.

There is this little companythat makes these cute little digital music players. And computers. And something called the iPhone. Everyone was wondering how they had held up amid the worsening economy. Pretty well, as it turns out.

Oh, and in the meantime, they boughta microchip design firm. That sort of threw everyone for a loop. The initial reaction was along the lines of “WTF does Apple want with a semi design shop?” Some of the speculation was that P.A. Semi’s low-power microprocessors could be modified for the iPhone or iPod. As it happens, I was briefed by these guys more than two years ago in my former life as semiconductor beat reporter. Ironically, their chips are based on IBM’s Power architecture, which Apple dumped from the Macs a while back in favor of Intel’s x86 chips. P.A. Semi’s products are aimed at hi-po computing: servers and supercomputers and the like. Not too likely that those will end up in an iPhone any time soon. But apparently, Apple does employ a number of chip designers who work with partners to tweak features to meet certain capabilities Apple’s product engineers have in mind. Still, it’s a curious play since if they wanted a bunch of chip designers, why not just hire them from the job market. Why pay a couple million per headcount to buy a whole company?

As if Apple wasn’t enough to handle, there’s a little game coming out next week that might just be, oh, only the biggest single entertainment property of the year. The Halo 3 launch last year opened the eyes of many reporters and editors to how big A-list video-game properties can be. Not only is Grand Theft Auto IV big business, it’s a game that has as much cultural relevance as The Matrix or Harry Potter.

My main preview story of the game is posted below, but before I get to that, I want to highlight two other pieces.

First is my Gameworld column on Sony’s Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. It’s a gorgeously realistic driving title, but only a fraction of what is promised when the full game comes out next year. Racing fans will love it, but I’m sure many consumers will see the $40 price tag as too high. 

What really interested me about my interview with Taku Imasaki, the U.S. producer on the game, was the vision that the title would become a platform for all things automotive: a driving game at the core, but augmented with videos of races and information about cars. 

Sony plans to add more features and pipe a steady stream of video content into “Prologue” in hopes that gamers’ interest will be redlining by the time the full game is released.

“Our goal is to become another medium for car companies, like magazines and TVs. We’re the perfect game for that and ideally we could become the MySpace or Facebook for auto enthusiasts,” Imasaki said.

Along with Rock Band and possibly Guitar Hero, it’s an example of how these connected consoles with gobs of processing power and storage are enabling games to become destinations/portals/aggregators for certain topics. Rock Band and GH do it for music, GT5 is doing it for cars. I’m sure there are other areas where it makes sense. Sports comes to mind. Take Madden football as an example. They already have a scrolling sports news ticker in Madden, why not buff that up to include highlights of the week’s games, interviews with athletes, and tutorials that show you how to use the video game to enhance your appreciation of the actual sport (I would love, for example, some breakdown of defensive schemes, which I only dimly understand).

The second piece I’ll highlight is an analysis of GTA4. Everybody knows this game is going to sell a buttload. The only question is it going to be serious buttload or just a regular buttload? Estimates from several Wall Street analysts range from 9 million to 12.5 million units by the end of this year, with most looking at about 10 million units. At that scale, analyzing the game’s sales is a little like speculating on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Let’s just call it “a lot” and leave it at that.

What I found more interesting was the question of what effect the game will have on console sales, and which console stands to benefit more, the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3? My expectation was that most people would say the Xbox 360. After all, Microsoft having locked in the exclusive downloadable content for later this year, combined with the superior implementation of online capabilities in Xbox Live, makes a pretty compelling argument for the machine.

It turns out that most people, from Wall Street analysts to industry observers who know far more about this stuff than me, figure the PS3 will get the biggest hardware sales boost. It basically boils down to two reasons: the hardcore gamers who dig GTA4probably already have an Xbox; those who aren’t hardcore gamers but love the GTA series probably got into it on the PlayStation 2, and are likely to stay loyal to Sony.

If you’ve made it this far, bless you. Hopefully it’s been worth it. I’ll leave you with my preview of Grand Theft Auto IV. Hit the link or go below the fold for the whole thing. It was a fun story to research and write.

By Scott Hillis

SAN FRANCISCO, April 25 (Reuters) – Beatings, carjackings, drive-by shootings, drunk driving and hookers. For video game fans, it can only mean one thing: “Grand Theft Auto 4″ is here, arrving with all the subtlety of a shotgun blast.

The latest chapter in the wildly popular and controversial criminal action franchise from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc is poised to be the biggest entertainment product of the year, with expected first-week sales of up to $400 million — dwarfing Hollywood’s biggest box-office openings.

The handiwork of Take-Two’s Rockstar game studio headed by British brothers Sam and Dan Houser, “Grand Theft Auto 4,” which will be launched next Tuesday, promises to crank up the thuggish drama that made previous installments the equivalent of “The Godfather” for Generation PlayStation.

“We also felt over the last few years there hadn’t been a great standout gangster movie. Maybe we could do something ourselves that would live alongside that stuff,” Rockstar’s Dan Houser told Variety magazine in a recent interview.

The gobs of processing power provided by Microsoft Corp’s Xbox 360 and Sony Corp’s PlayStation 3 gaming consoles allowed Rockstar to imbue even background characters with personalities and unique behaviors.

“The game just feels like a movie now. The camera angles, the little details and things you look for in a film are things they can do now,” said Ricardo Torres, editor-in-chief of GameSpot, a leading gaming review Web site.

CONTROVERSY, AS ALWAYS

Of course, it would not be a “Grand Theft Auto” game without controversy.

The series that gave gamers the freedom to shoot cops and hook up with prostitutes before beating them up and stealing their money has added drunk driving and lap dances to its repertoire of vicarious thrills.

“A lot of it is done just tongue-in-cheek. It has that same sense of humor (as past games) that is very juvenile but at the same time is a parody of American culture,” said Crispin Boyer, senior executive editor of video games for the 1UP Network.

Previous GTA games have been a lightning rod for criticism by politicians. 2008 Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton said in 2005 that the series was demeaning to women.

The negative publicity has not stopped GTA from becoming one of the most successful game franchises ever, having sold 70 million copies worldwide and spawning legions of imitators.

The game may also determine the fate of Take-Two, which is resisting a $2 billion takeover offer from rival Electronic Arts Inc. If sales are stronger than the already lofty expectations, it could force EA to pay more.

A dystopian coming-to-America story, “Grand Theft Auto 4″ revolves around an Eastern European immigrant who ends up running illicit errands for local mob bosses.

Yet the game is not without moral consequence. Players face tough choices regarding who lives or dies and whether ambition is more important than friendship, decisions that affect the outcome of the story.

“Grand Theft Auto 3,” debuted in 2001 and was seen as a new beginning for the franchise because it defined a new genre of “open world” games that gave players unprecedented freedom. Two unnumbered games in the series have launched since, each with lots of sales, and lots of controversy.

“‘Grand Theft Auto’ really speaks to a new age of gaming. It’s a type of gaming that is culturally relevant,” said Geoff Keighley, host of Spike TV’s GameTrailers TV show.

OPPOSITION STIRS

The game carries a Mature rating, meaning retailers are not supposed to sell it those under 17 years old, but critics charge the industry rating system is easily skirted and that children will end up playing the game anyway.

“We are calling on all major retailers to reconsider any decisions to sell this,” said Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, a media content watchdog.

Rockstar, which declined requests for an interview with the Housers, bristles at such suggestions. “If this was a movie or TV show and was the best in its field, you’d give it loads of awards and put those awards shows on television,” Dan Houser told Variety.