GTA 3 Could Have Been an Xbox Exclusive
Microsoft could have accquired exclusive rights to Grand Theft Auto 3. However, the company did not take the opportunity because they did not think the game would be successful.
- GTA 3 could have been an exclusive title on the first Xbox;
- Rockstar wanted Microsoft to fund the brand's transition into full 3D;
- However, the decision-makers in the company's Xbox division felt that the brand would fail to make a successful leap into the third dimension;
- As a result, the developers went to Sony and GTA 3 became a temporary exclusive for the PS2.
To celebrate the 20th launch anniversary of the first Xbox console, an excellent documentary series called Power On: The Story of Xbox has been released on YouTube, containing a lot of interesting facts. One of them is that Grand Theft Auto III could have been an exclusive for Microsoft's console, but Rockstar's offer was rejected.
This situation is mentioned by Kevin Bachus, who at that time was responsible for contacts with game developers. As he explains, Rockstar Games wanted Microsoft to invest in a project to switch the two-dimensional brand GTA(two-dimensional in terms of gameplay) to 3D.
Decision-makers at the corporation at the time rejected the proposal. They claimed Grand Theft Auto was not a brand suitable for transition to full 3D. Xbox executives also had trouble understanding the interface of the new project and were convinced that the first two installments of the series were not popular enough.
This decision was obviously wrong. Bachus himself was surprised when he heared that. Additionally, the people who made it were clearly misinformed. The first GTA sold over a million copies within twelve months of its release.
That mistake proved to be very costly. Sony showed a much better sense of the market and as a result Grand Theft Auto 3 was released as a PlayStation 2 exclusive. The game became the biggest bestseller of 2001 in the US. The PC edition debuted in May 2002, and the game hit the Xbox only in late 2003. In turn GTA: Vice City hit Microsoft's console with a year delay compared to the release on PS2, and in the case of San Andreas there was an eight-month delay. Only Grand Theft Auto 4 was released simultaneously on both companies' platforms, but it was a different console generation.
