Microsoft is pretty confident about its chances in the upcoming console showdown around the launch of the Grand Theft Auto IV. And it has every right to be – it has bagged itself an exclusive content deal that literally means the only place to experience the 'full' GTA experience is on Xbox. Plus the only preview content seen so far has been running on the 360, so there's little chance of the game looking or running any better on the PS3.
And you can add to that the fact that there are over one and a half times as many Xbox 360 s out there in the market place (actually, it's more like 3 times in America), so in terms of sheer install base numbers, it should have the edge. Or so you'd think.
Thus it is with some surprise and much delight that we find that the majority of players (surveyed) who are planning on buying GTA IV, are opting to do so on PS3. Of those polled, 49% are choosing the PS3 version, where as a meagre 46% will be buying the one for the Xbox 360. Only a moody 6% have decided not to buy it; we assume they're Wii owners.
Of course, you need to bear in mind that this is but one simple survey, carried out on one set of blogs and then carefully photoshopped into a misleading, poorly labelled graph format. It isn't going to stand up to close scientific scrutiny or anything, so don't get too upset if you don't agree. We did however run it on Xboxer, our sister site, to maintain some semblance of fairness, and given Xbox's obvious advantage in the GTA IV battle it is a pretty interesting outcome.