i don't get the picture....

Thanks to JaKE Hoss for the image, indeed. Brilliant!

@icepick314: Bork, Bork, Bork!

Methinks the aforementioned CSR should think of a new witty analogy. Quickly.

the game just froze on me completely....towards the end of a very long mission. sucks.

twice i've also gotten disc read errors.

i'd turn off autosave but I like it too much.

Good info.
I didn't have any cutscene issues last night,like I did before. But,I'm getting terrible slowdown if the cops come after me on 3 stars.When the Swat trucks start ramming you.I guess it's too much going on screen.Not really a bug.
(360 version premium version)

@icepick314: Bork bork bork!

The game is borked.

@Brian Crecente: Did you guys not get my email to your tips at kotaku? I know what I sent works great, I havn't had an issue since. Might let people know. Awesome game, wooohoo.

@Brian Crecente: Haha beat me to it :D

I don't know anyone with the problem. I just think its the internet being vocal again.

The Swedish Chef! I am so watching The Muppet Show box sets tonight! For some reason X-Play said this was affecting the 60gig PS3s. They didn't mention problems with the 360 or other PS3s. It's been flawless for me on the 360 and now I'm going to knock on wood. Hard. (It's a superstition thing. Get your mind out of the gutter.)

I hope they fix the multiplayer issues where you try to join in a session and then get booted back to the single player.

I used to have a lot of freezing which occurred during the intro. But after 3 delete/installs and getting past the intro, it's been smooth sailing.

@cocomo:

I have friends covering all xbox360 models and ps3 models, non have had an issue

I blame teh internetz kidz

Oh schnap, I think I just found a new avatar image :-)

Seems to be okay so far on my PS3, had 1 freeze up where I had to re-set but nothing since. My friend's keeps freezing for 5 seconds and then starts moving again.. Wierd..

@Mr Fortitude:

"Did you guys not get my email to your tips at kotaku?"

I wish Kotaku would send a form email just to notify you if they received tips. Ever since the "gaming room" pics I sent Tori didn't show up in that update I've worried my emails are not being improperly filtered and sent to the Kotaku junk mail folder, never to be seen. So, what was your tip to help with Grand Theft Auto IV problems?

ps3 60gb here... didn't have any cutscene issues, but gameplay stutters from time to time and all-out locked up just while driving through liberty city last night. had to reboot.

@Sloopydrew:

I meant to type, "my emails are being improperly filtered" rather than "not improperly filtered." D'oh!

@Salen:

Playing on the PS3 or 360? I had the exact same problem on the 360 until I bypassed my router and connected the modem directly to the console. Ever since I've been able to play any multiplayer game I wanted without a hitch.

@Sloopydrew: If you go to the system blade and select memory, then highlight the hard drive. Press the buttons y x x lb rb x x and preform the system maintenance. It fixed my problem right away and havn't had an issue yet.

Cool.

I'll try those, though, to be honest. It only froze once.

Anyways, i'll give it a shot.

no problems on my ps3 version

@Mr Fortitude: That sounds fake :P

@Woodwater: Try it, you will see how fake it is when it works. If you do it right it will give you a message saying "Do you want to preform system maintenance?" Just say yes.

Brian, did they really tell you the quote about cancer, or is it just something you said?

By the way guys, did you know the PS3 upscales GTA IV to 1080p if set up correctly?

I had enabled all three HD resolutions in the Display Settings (720p, 1080i, 1080p). I then disabled 720p and 1080i, meaning I "told" the PS3/GTA my TV could only do 1080p.

Boom. GTA IV launches in 1080p. Not native, mind you, but the upscaling gave an awesome boost in sharpness.

I love Rockstar for this game. This is more than I had ever anticipated. Best £45 I spent on a game until MGS4 comes out.

Anyway, to those with a 1080p display, I highly recommend this. I'd take comparison shots, but I only have a crappy 3.2MP camera (mobile phone) and taking shots off the TV isn't that great.

I've had the game freeze on me about 10 times. And it's not always cut-scenes. Once it was in the menu when I was adjusting the color saturation. Once while I was just sitting in a car listening to the radio. Once just walking around. Thank God for autosave, or I would've had an aneurysm by now. Plus, as a 360 owner, I alway question whether it's the game or my hardware that's causing the problem.

I can understand Rockstar being reticent to release a patch. They have a great record to keep up. Their games have needed no/minimal patching in the past and I'm sure they'd like to keep it that way by only issuing a patch if absolutely necessary.

I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if the number of patches they've released is still in single figures.

I havent had any problems thus far in terms of actual gameplay. But when I press the PS button to quit the game my system does reboot itself.

I've had GTA IV freeze up on me twice now, and I'd be happy to turn off the autosave, but it's the autosave that's saved the day when the game suddenly decides to freeze after finishing a lengthy mission. Also, now that GTA IV is having Bully-esque issues, I feel sort of bad for blaming Mad Doc for the problems in that port - apology malts for everyone.

I played 6+ hours of GTA IV last night. Didn't have any problems or lockups. Not sure whats all this hoopla all about.

@DigiMish: No, they really said that. I assume they were joking.

@Mr Fortitude: Same trick works for Oblivion when it gets slow, which is semi-ironic with your icon. (I've done it for R6:V issues as well.)

Now that I know the "hold down the A button while the disk is booting" trick for Oblivion I haven't had to use system maintenance for THAT game, but it's good to know it's there.

@NateN: I tried the hold down A button trick and it never worked for me. I didn't know this trick when I played oblivion although I wish I would have. I played almost 6 hours straight after doing this, where before I was only getting 10 minutes at a time.

Don't suppose there a fix for the "no copies left in any shops" bug?

I just had the funniest bug ever today. I was running across the road, not watching where I was going, and ran right into a passing car. Didn't get knocked down, just bent over the hood a bit.

Niko does the little stumble back animation, but gets stuck in it. So here I am, watching as my character awkwardly moonwalks backwards for almost a mile, until I finally got hit by another car which broke me out of the stumble loop.

I didn't even mind. I was laughing my ass off.

mine (60g ps3) began freezing last night during missions. it went the entire day before without one lockup. i have, as of yet, been unable to play online as well.

I, thankfully, haven't had any problems yet.
However, the possibility of this problem or the RRoD problem with the old-model 360's (mine!) has made me worry about getting half-way through the game then having to wait weeks. :/

@y2julio: Same thing happened with Assassins Creed for me, kept reading about all these glitches and whatnot but I finished the game 100% without a hitch. Just some people getting unlucky, makes sense when you factor in the amount of copies out in the wild, 600,000 in the UK alone so some are bound the experiencing problems.

@Sloopydrew: "this was affecting the 60gig PS3s. They didn't mention problems with the 360 or other PS3s."

I got a 40, here, and mine froze once when it was loading (the single-word, "LOADING" screen).

@PlayerX: For reference, I'm running the game on pretty low spec:

my TV is only an old 480i CRT

I have only a SIXASSES (no vibration)

I've got autosave ON

screen saver on (I'm assuming this is where the screen dims after a period of inactivity)

I have the latest firmware

I have enough HDD space (which is odd, since I have a 40...)

@PlayerX: 40GB here. Upgraded to 250GB though. My *PS3* actually never froze. However, once, when starting a mission for Manny, the game itself froze. I could exit it via the PS button with no problem though. The music kept playing but the picture got stuck. Simple lockup.

And that's after about, say, 25 hours of gameplay. I think my addiction rating in the stats is "Getting Sketchy" or worse (higher) than that by now.

GTA 4 mess up is actually virtual cancer CONFIRMED.

@Sloopydrew: "
Playing on the PS3 or 360? I had the exact same problem on the 360 until I bypassed my router and connected the modem directly to the console. Ever since I've been able to play any multiplayer game I wanted without a hitch."

PS3, here, and I dunno if this is still happening to people, but apparently there was trouble with PS3 multiplayer yesterday. I got that "can't access server" message when Niko was still inside his (Bohan) apartment, but when I went out onto the street, multiplayer started up without a hitch.

@Candlejack: "Upgraded to 250GB though"

What model HDD did you get? I'm seriously interested in doing that when I get some spare cash.

Yes, because GTA IV crashing is just like cancer

@Brian Crecente: A lot of people, including myself, had several crashes at around 23:30 last night (GMT) here's a linK [www.avforums.com]

I had a weird issue with my 360 version last night not allowing me to move immediately after I loaded it. I was stuck in Niko's safehouse but couldn't move him, access start/cell phone etc. I restarted several times, cleaned the disc and all that but it seemed to be a problem with my controller needing to be on the 1st light of the Xbox ring. Once I unplugged my Rockband controllers it worked. Bit of a pain in the ass though, it worked fine on Tuesday.

Thanks Brian - the post image slug definitely eased my pain a little bit.

As one of the "borked" (PS3 60Gig - 2 hours play no problem, now clockwork <2min lockups) it remains the lack of an official announcement from R* that's been almost as frustrating as not being able to play.

Stuff happens. I get it. It's not a personal attack at me, or the PS3 - and Rockstar and Sony both have standard QA practices - so chalk this one up to "unfortunate"... but not knowing how many of us there are, or what's being done is frustrating.

I get that on launch day they probably aren't chomping at the bit to put out bad press... but given the constant 20 minute hold calling Rockstar Canada support and percentage of on-line bickering (over the usual baseline amount) would lead me to believe that the number is "more than me". Heck, even if we're 1:10,000 put that out... it won't make *me* feel any better - but it'll sure help your optics.

I have a 60GB system made prior to May 2007 and I haven't experience any problems yet. Though admittedly I'm not that far in the game. Hopefully nothing arises.

@y2julio: "I played 6+ hours of GTA IV last night. "

Only six?! ;)

@PlayerX:

FWIW (and I go through through a *lot* of hard drives) Seagate Barracuda's are quite exceptional. For at least four years now they've had a notably better fail rate than Hitachi, Samsung, or Western Digital.

Sadly, they've noticed this and started charging more for their drives recently... but I've literally only had one fail in over a hundred drives.

the pharmacist in the CVS i work at got the red ring of right as he was opening the tray to load the disc the morning it came out.

If the trick @Mr Fortitude mentioned sounds fake, it is a Microsoft-documented way to clear the hard drive cache.

I don't think it's specifically a GTA4 problem, since I've seen it in playing a couple of games (Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Overlord). But it might help you.

[support.microsoft.com]

@stryker1800: ...red ring of death, was thinking faster then i was typing

So I called R* support this morning too. They had me go through the same sequence of tests. None worked, and they told me to call back later today or tomorrow.

You can believe that I will be hounding them until I can play this goodness. I wanna cause havoc already!!!!!

I posted it before, I'll post it again since people seemed bogged out by crashes...

Official word from Rockstar:

"- Rockstar Games reported that both Xbox 360 and PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto IV may crash. For PS3 crashes primarily on the early 60GB model; for Xbox 360 crashes occur on all the models."

@thebigsmoke: SWEET! Thanks... now if only I could make Niko's money turn real somehow....

I've put in 13 hours single player and another 5-6 multiplayer on and launch Elite 360 and have had 1 freeze so far. Funny bug happened to me last night. I called for roman's cab service and got picked up. I generally ride around in first person and I wanted to hear what the cabby had to say when all of a sudden he gets in an accident and the cab rolls over a ledge and onto its side. Since im in first person I get stuck in there for 15 minutes before the game decides to launch me 50 feet straight up into the air and I fall to my death. Was laughing my ass off. Thats what I love about this game, even the bugs are hilarious.