Does anyone think that GTA4 might be using an emulator to run on the PC?
I know it's a stupid and random thought which just crossed my mind, but in previous GTA incarnations (since GTA3) bits of the game contained data which was only relavent for the consoles.

For example, the PS2 joypad layout and "memory card stuff" was included in GTA Vice City's main GTA3.img datafile.

The fact that GTA3 and Vice City were woefully coded (bad transparent texture problems) and odd performance glitches suggested that they were not properly coded or tested for the PC platform, but merely ported across

However GTA San Andreas to me felt and played a lot better than GTA3 and Vice City, IMHO was the only one of the three which felt like it had been developed for the PC. (I recall it's the only one with FSAA options in the Graphics settings and used DirectX9 I think to).

I've not played GTA4 on the PC as I am too scared to buy it, after reading all these posts on here and other forums

AND

Reading the negative feedback people are giving the "patch" which has just been released I'm worried it will ruin the whole series.

As controversial as this may sound, I blame the developers for having "console exclusivity".

IF

The games were released on PC, PS3, and XBox at the same time the games would be developed properly, but I get the feeling they develop it for the console, milk as much money as they can and then port to the PC to get some extra sales. None of the Call of Duty games suffer from this problem, so why should GTA?!?

Hi Noinimod

I agree, the issues are too far and wide (what many people would describe as show stopping bugs), for R* not to be aware of them.
Everything from the crappy Windows Live and RockStar Antisocial club being mandatory requirements to play the game and the bugs smell of crappy coding and poor judgement....to put it bluntly R* are completely unaware of what the PC gaming community want and enjoy in a game.

How many gamers here thought the Windows Live and RockStar Social club are good ideas to try out and have a look at, BUT NOT what you want to see have as mandatory requirements to actually play a game?!?

Fair enough if the RockStar Antisocial club enabled people to play against the PS3 and Xbox opponents yet if you did not have it running you could only play PC opponents I could see the point...but no....it's just glorified bloat and spyware

John