360 GTAIV most-rented game of '08

Deserves it

Interesting. I think my own tendency is to buy more XBOX 360 games, but to rent more PlayStation 3 games. Before this recent holiday season, I didn't own any PS3 games at all.

Oh, and Jebril is right. Why would you rent Fallout 3? I mean, to try it out and then buy it ok, but I don't see the point. Fallout 3 is a definite buy just like Oblivion.

I don't understand to this day why Grand Theft Auto IV got a perfect 10... I read the Gamespot review over and over and over and I still don't get it....

First thing's first, no PS3 games on that list......(ya I hate the PS3 and feel that its a rip off, bite meh). Second thing, Fallout 3? Someone mentioned this, but that's not a game to rent. xD It's gonna take ya like 100 hrs to do everything in it, probably moar if you wanna make different characters to do different things.

This statement is just because people wanted to try it because of the hype but knew deep down that it was a waste of $60 dollars. I really don't know why this game was/is so well respected and like in the gaming community. The story is nice for a bit, but then just becomes tedious and boring like the story of Fable 2. However, at least Fable 2 had some nice features like the extensive character customization. This statement (GTA4 being most rented game of 2008 ) really only goes to show that this game truly only deserves a small amount of interest. And that our economy sucks and people are having a hard time making money to buy things, such as games... and food...

Dillanhaley ........... just shut up dude

u dont seem to get it that the unrealness in San Andreas is what made it better than GTA4. And also the load of things you could do in San Andreas, all disappeared in the gen crossover. San Andreas is still loads more fun than GTA4 could ever be.

I'm getting sick and tired of people saying GTA4 was a letdown or overrated. Seriously GTA4 was amazing. It was such a vast improvement over the last one its astonishing. Do you remember getting hit by a car in San Andreas? It looked like garbage. GTA4 broke boundaries in videogames it was the first game to use euphoria, the story was incredible (Niko was cool), the scenery was amazing, the multiplayer rocked....the list goes on! Anyone who cries about how theres no planes and apparently florklifts can go play saints row 2 or whatever. No wonder it sold so much and was rented so much......it ruled

Im one of those people who thought that GTA4 was a big letdown (IMO), it lacked the detail features wise from the other gta's like San Andreas. Of course i was excited when gta4 came out and i was when i was playing it but after about a week i started noticing things that didnt quite add up for me, one of them were the forklifts, i mean whats the point when the forklift doesnt even do anything the same with the tow truck, the other one ill mention is the wanted net that u have to get out of when u get a star, where the game tells you at the start of the game that police arn't supposed to know where u are when its grey, but ooo do they know, see them closing in on you from all sides or gathering above u when your underneath a bridge and when you walk out the stars come back. It just seemed sorta unfinished and the whole delay that i dont think they released the full story about, but even with the delay that was a long time in development for things like that to be left out. The rentals, gta's were probably so high because of the negative user comments i read on gs and other sites that it got after a few months of it coming out, so people probably thought they'd rent before they paid for it. This is my opinion and im not tring to tell you all what to think.

"The next three top renters were also all on Microsoft's console: Halo 3 (3rd), Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (4th), and Army of Two (5th)." Lmao, awesome.

maybe everyone just used their PS3s for blu-ray movie rentals :P

quanloco you say "First off more space on a disk is not going to allow a game to have better graphics the graphics are going to be handled by the graphics chip, ram and cpu's." I think you ment to say "Make" instead of "Allow" because we all know you can't fit Masterchiefs model and texture on a floppy disk . You are half right, half wrong. Yes the GPU, RAM, and CPU do play a large part in the graphics but, without plenty of storage space, you can't have very many textures and models. Bigger textures use more space, some Xbox games have to reuse the same object in many places in a game to keep from using to much space. This makes many environments look similar. Also Xbox games have to heavily compress models and textures to fit them, usually you don't notice because they do it to objects you don't see much and you don't pay attention to such as background objects. You can see this badly in the 360 version of Oblivion, they ran out of space and had to compress just about EVERYTHING. This is why the graphics in the PS3 version are better, when they went back to do the PS3 version they could use their uncompressed models and textures. Also the PS3s GOTY edition had The Game itself, all extras, and Shivering Isles. When Oblivion first came out on PC and 360 it was exactly 13.13gb then Bethesda had to compress it down to 9.5gb for the 360, the PS3 GOTY version is 14.35gb, so yeah I'd say you get some extra features. Also I don't see any 360 games that boast 2 campaigns (Resistance 2) and 60 player multiplayer, not even to mention MAG which will have 256. Better graphics then Gears of War? Are you kidding, yes it has good graphics but its fantastic lighting helps it look alot better. I'm guessing you haven't played MGS4, Gran Turismo: Prolouge or LittleBigPlanet on 1080p. Also saying "MGS4 with out all the cut scenes at the most 15 hrs." Is like saying "Fallout 3 without all of the side quests and the fact that you just wonder around half of the time" Oh yeah, MGS4 also had to fit Metal Gear: Online on the disk, so now you must add all the gear and levels from that. I'm pretty sure you got much more gameplay than both F3 and Oblivion. Also in Oblivion and Fallout much of the environment is blank save for a few trees and rubble, thats because Bethesda uses the same objects hundreds of time in the game, this save disk space, also makes just about every environment look the same. About the features, have you read about the PS3 version of Bioshock having superior graphics not to mention the the extra gameplay that got cut from the 360 version, Unreal 3 on PS3 had mods, the whole 60 player thing is a pretty big feature too. Being a fanboy, I don't think I'm a fanboy, I think the 360 is a very nice console, I believe that both consoles have fantastic games (especially their exclusives), I wasn't saying the PS3 is better than 360 I was just proving that Blu-Ray isn't just a movie thing, it very much has to do with games, it doesn't really effect MultiPlatform games, just exclusives, I wasn't saying that the PS3 has "bigger, better or longer" I was stating that saying "more than 50 % of the people with one got it for the Blu-Ray." (untrue) was like saying "more than 50% of the people with a PS3 got it for the better movie quality, and the bigger, better, and longer games" (also mostly untrue) I wasn't really standing up for the PS3, I was more Standing up for the POTENTIAL of Blu-Ray in gaming. As you can see i only REALLY mentioned a few PS3 games (GT5, MGS4, LBP, R2) never did I say any of these games were BETTER i merely said some have better graphics, more players, and were longer. Just because Resistance 2 has more players doesn't make the online gameplay better than Halo 3 or Gears of War, Just because MGS4 has amazing graphics and is long doesn't make it better than Fable, Just because Gran Turismo looks beautiful doesn't make it more fun than Forza, Just because LittleBigPlanet looks great doesn't make it cuter than Viva Pinata, also with Bioshock and Oblivion you have to consider the fact that PS3 got them a YEAR later, also when I said MGS4 has MORE gameplay I did not say it had BETTER gameplay than Oblivion and Fallout. I am a happy owner of a PS3 and 360, and a former owner of a Wii, the Wii is not for Mii, personally the only reason i think its doing good is its price and the fact that it doesn't have multiple SKUs (people don't walk into a store and say the want the 3rd best version of the 360 or the arcade) Just please don't assume I'm a fanboy or that I'm biased, thanks.

I enjoy Fallout 3 but that isn't a game you can rent and finish. I have been playing it for many hours and I am not anywhere near the finish. So it shocks me to see it so high.

Some of it may come from exclusives. Most of the PS3 exclusives haven't been quite as highly anticipated as GeOW2 was. And (arguably) the best PS3 exclusive, MGS4, is the kind of game I would never rent (assuming I had a PS3) because its too long for me to beat in the rental time. But maybe that's just me. :P

GTA is a good choice for renting cause replay value is relatively low...

Your right Boston it is facts but I believe the bad politics part comes from us the readers and how we react and respond to the article itself.

How can it be bad politics? There is no bias in that article but FACTS. The writer was merely stating FACTS from the list.

(to quanloco's post) Wow I didnt know people that old played videogames, I think when you 45 its time to stop.

I would be surprised if most people were to actually read the article leading up to the list, then making an informed opinion, rather than just looking at the list then make a blind comment. But like kuhana said it's pretty much politics here, the first bad sign and it is voiced before confirmation. Word of advice, you should probably read the first and last paragraph of the article.

GTA IV should be owned not rented. Just so much in that game. Secondly, the fact that NO Sony games made the list should tell you something.

This is just a public service announcement but does everyone realize that if these comments were not on a forum but rather face to face and lets say like a debate then there would be full scale nuclear war. Neither side is ever going submit that the console they have is inferior I mean its like saying that Ann Coulter suddenly switched parties and now hates Republicans. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN!!!!!!! LOL

Wow, 360 & Nintendo whitewash! Sign of the times for Sony...

shows how poor 360 players are from upgrading their console, paying extra to play online, or paying to fix a broken product.

What the? All you PS3 fanboys and girls keep saying the same thing....."PS3 games are worth buying, thats why there are no PS3 games on this list". First of all, Halo 3 is one of the best selling games of all time on any console. So is Grand Theft Auto (360 version that is). Same can be said for Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Heck, All the games on this list are top sellers. So, the fact that there are no PS3 games on this list, isn't a good thing! All you PS3 folks seriously need to get a CLUE! Wow, I never knew their were so many people in Denial until I read some of these comments.

gamerdude maybe you should read a bit more instead of just typing your opinion this is straight from ps3 fanboy. A new study out today by Experian Consumer Research concluded there are differences between consumers who purchased the PS3 and those who purchased the Xbox 360. The biggest difference being that while the Xbox 360 appeals the most to gamers who are 35-44, the PS3 appeals to the more senior demographic of 45 and up. The study also finds that youngsters ages 18-24 prefer the Nintendo Wii. Finally, the study uses "new media respondents" as a control group, defined as those who spend more than one hour online per week. This study doesn't tell us anything we don't already know; they don't state any specific numbers in their press release and the presentation you can download basically concludes that there are no differences between PS3 owners and 360 owners except for age. After seeing a sample of their rudimentary research, if we were a company looking for statistics to help us market to gamers, we'd stay away from them.

Dillanhaley you paragraph hold no water, It is written by obviously a fanboy. First off more space on a disk is not going to allow a game to have better graphics the graphics are going to be handled by the graphics chip, ram and cpu's. On top of that there is yet to be a game that looks better than gears or gears 2 on ps3 multiplat or exclusive. Im not attacking im telling the truth I own both consoles and tell me what game on the ps3 other than fallout and oblivion which both are mutiplat have longer game play than any of the 360 games. Drakes fortune was like at the most 6 hr of game play, the same with heavenly sword, lair if you could stay interested long enough to keep playing it, MGS4 with out all the cut scenes at the most 15 hrs. The other thing I want to know is what better features are you talking about I have not heard of any. Come on why are you all in such denial. Just so you all know the only game that has used up all the space on the bluray disk is MGS4 and its because it was a whole bunch of cut scenes in 1080p. Don't try and lie to make yourselves fell better about your purchase.

You would think that since Nintendo has sold so many Wii's that it would easily outpace Microsoft in terms of rentals. With more systems out their...there should also be a larger portion of people renting games. Nintendo can't claim that it's because people are more inclined to buy the software because it has been proven that Microsoft also dominates the software sold per console. I wonder why Nintendo is having such a problem with moving software when it's hardware is so popular.

Faseli said it perfectly.

But the games on PS3 aren't bigger, better or longer. Despite the advanced storage medium the other more everyday features of the console mean it can't take advantage of them. As we all know the 360 is far more efficient at streaming information from its drive and onto its CPU & GPU (thanks to generous buffering and bandwidth between components) and the bigger textures are complete bollocks if you do not have the ram to hold them in, which again the PS3 does not. So it is all swings and round-a-bouts yet again. The PS3 does not have the speed or grunt to move textures or information that is beyond the 360, there are too many bottle necks within the hardware, much like its forbearer. Its like saying if the Master System had a Blu-Ray drive it would have better graphics. For a real practical example look towards the Mega/Sega CD.

Strange that people keep saying PS3 is last on rentals when it clearly says they didn't release the data for it. I only rent games that I don't want to own a copy of but want to play. Mirrors Edge, Midnight Club, Motorstorm Pacific Rift are those I've rented so far, all on PS3. Seeing as Blu-ray doesn't scratch (although I've seen many that have...) it's not too bad renting them, especially at around £5 a time. Then again now a lot of games are aroung £20 I'm considering buying those type of games I'd rent so that I don't have to rush through the games so quick.

I'm not at all surprised by the lack of a PS3 title on this list. The truth is that Sony has sold less consoles than Microsoft and Nintendo, so their console will move less games. And don't forget that a decent sized portion of PS3 owners use the console as a cheapish Blu-Ray player largely or solely for movie purposes, and not for playing games. My family is like that. After buying our HDTV, we had a large store credit at the electonics store. Since the electronics store really didn't have anything we particularly wanted to spend the credit on, we decided to just get a Blu-Ray player. Even though we already have an Xbox 360, we noticed that a PS3 was only 50$ more than the Blu-Ray model we were looking at buying, so we just bought a PS3 instead. Yet to this day, we still only have a single game for the PS3, and that's Ratchet and Clank. Plus PS3 sales are more distributed over the globe than the Xbox 360. For example, Japaneese PS3 owners aren't going to be that likely to rent a game like Grand Theft Auto IV.

people still rent games?

Wow, one of the most common attacks I keep seeing is people saying things like "more than 50 % of the people with a PS3 got it for the Blu-Ray." Well your 100% correct. One thing that people don't understand is that Blu-Ray isn't a special movie disk, its a storage media, so PS3 games use Blu-Ray disks as well as movies. The Wii uses DVDs which hold 4.7gb with a few exceptions like SSBB that use Dual Layer DVDs which hold 9.5gb. The Xbox 360 uses Dual Layer DVDs which again only holds 9.5gb. The PS3 uses Blu-Ray disks for GAMES which hold 50gb each. This means you could fit atleast 5 Xbox 360 games on one Blu-Ray disk. This is why PS3 exclusives have many more features, better graphics (can hold more and bigger textures), longer games, more players, bigger soundtracks, things like that, its simply because Blu-Ray disks can hold much more data. The Xbox 360 has to have its games shorter games, worse graphics (compressed textures), smaller soundtracks, and sometimes they have to have features cut just to get the game to fit on the disk. This is also why the 360 will never get games like Metal Gear Solid 4 which is 50gb and would NEVER fit on a 9.5gb disk no matter how much you compress it. Now realize here that I'm not saying every PS3 game is like this, just the exclusives. The reason why multi-platform games look the same or even better for the 360 is because they make it for the 360 first so that they make sure it fits on the smaller capacity Dual Layer DVDs then they port it onto the PS3. So basically those Multi-platform games take up the full 9.5gb on the 360s disk but only 9.5gb/50gb on the PS3 and the extra 40gb gets wasted. This is why the next Xbox console cannot survive without Blu-Ray or some other larger storage media device. I just wanted to let people know that Blu-Ray isn't just a superior movie disk, its also a superior game disk. So by saying "more than 50 % of the people with a PS3 got it for the Blu-Ray." is just like saying "more than 50% of the people with a PS3 got it for the better movie quality, and the bigger, better, and longer games"

I don't even know how people can rent games today....they're a lot larger and take longer to fully experience than the games back in the day of NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. It can take a month or more to see everything there is to see in games today.

I don't rent games. I like to own them because I know somewhere down the road I'm gonna wanna play them a few more times.

Renting kinda scares me sometimes. I always wonder how the hell people scratch up the disks soo bad. I mean handling of it in the stores cannot be that bad. It has to be people at home. I really think people throw the disks on the floor and let their cats dance all over it with their nails. With that said GTAIV should have been most purchased. That game was a masterpiece. Sure it didnt have a ton of crap to do like San Andreas but it went back to its roots and delivered a superior storyline with a great and much needed overhaul on the gameplay mechanics. San Andreas sure didnt have an interesting story as it is the only GTA story that I cannot seem to remember.

wow xbox is the best

I work in rental, and I seriously don't believe these numbers. GTA IV definitely didn't rent the most, but it probably is what we had the most rental copies of (perhaps that's what they are actually tracking). Our store probably had about 40 of the 360 version for rent, and about 30 for the PS3 version. We never had more than maybe 10 rented out on each at any given time, it never really rented that much. We had more people that were purchasing the game, honestly. We had a really awesome midnight release for GTA, it went really well.

@corruptgamer i know 1 person who bought it for only bluray movies and they like it. they only bought one game and its GTA4.And i agree with the renting. I rented starwars and when i saw the disk i just shook my head wondering how the freak did this get scratched up?

@torontomapleafs So you're saying 10 million PS3 owners bought one to watch movies? The Blu-Ray player joke is old now considering a stand alone player COSTS LESS than an actual PS3 now. Who rents games these days anyways? Now that games permanently disc based, most of them are scratched to death by irresponsible kids and tweens.

@ torontomapleafs Exactly. People will ALWAYS attempt to make excuse for WHY their favorite console isn't doing well. Frankly, I don't see why these immature gamers even need to say anything. If a gamer likes a specific console over the others, so be it. If I was a PS3 fan, I wouldn't feel compelled to write idiotic stuff defending my liking for the console ESPECIALLY, when talking about rentals. Every console has it's pro's and con's.

Who cares. We get pointless stats and it turns into system wars. It was -2 degrees this morning and I was cold, it was probably Sony's fault.

@ Gamerdude. Are you seriously trying to make excuses for the PS3. It is last on software sales hardware sales and now rental sales. This is because i bet you more than 50 % of the people with one got it for the Blu-Ray. So stop claming your not a fanboy when you clearly are.

@death919 - Dude Where have you been for the last 6 months. Thats like the only thing the devs. and publ. have been bi***ing about and thats wny GoW2 came whit the not so exclusive one use code for the flashback map pack. To make ppl want to buy it new and not rent or buy it used (Its been mostly about buying games used but some ppö have also taken up the renting).

Gamer Dude I'm sorry i disagree with you renting is not a bad sign it just shows that people like to try before they buy and maybe nobody rents ps3 games because 1) the ps3 is expensive therefore the owners have money and can afford to buy games. 2) Nobody owns a ps3 (I literally only new of 1 maybe 2 people who had a ps3 last year).

Renting? I remember doing that way back in the day when I was too young to have a job and thus, only received games on Xmas and Bdays. I wouldn't say renting is a bad sign for a console, I would just say it's probably done by the younger crowd more than teens on up.

I would definitely take MGS4 over Halo 3 any day.

Its can be considered that renting for a console is a bad sign... it shows that maybe the games lack replay value... And in case you didn't notice the PS3 user base more so consists of 16-30 year olds or even more... Most people in that age group actually have the money to be able to buy games... unlike the 360 and Wii age group which is probably roughly 8-18 for the 360 and 4-16 for the Wii... And plus a lot of people that have a PS3 can actually trust their hardware... and there is a ton of quality exclusives for the PS3... and a ton more to come in 2009... I have a 360 too.. but don't play it as much as my PS3... because the PS3 currently has more of the games I want and it looks like its going to stay that way for a while... I mean come on Killzone 2, InFamous, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, Fat Princess, maybe Uncharted 2 (doubtful), I'm just naming a few and there is a ton more in 2010 also maybe MAG, FFV13, DC Universe... What does the 360 have for exclusives in 2009? Halo Wars? come on really.... I love both of my consoles... but I just have to try and put you ignorant fanboys in your place sometimes by being kind of harsh...