Rockstar's Xbox Bully Failings: Fuel to EA's Bid?

The fact that Bully: Scholarship Edition on Xbox 360 is now being accused of being 'horrific' as a port could well play into Electronic Arts' hands in the ongoing take-over shenanigans with Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two Interactive.

The failings in the Xbox 360 version of the (insert, 'controversial', 'outrageous', 'fun') game have been widely reported - specifically via Neogaf. They, basically, entail game-crunching freezes.

Rockstar's CEO, Sam Houser, has already and very openly responded to Kotaku about the problem, which he put down to, "...some older 360s" which are "...experiencing framerate issues, freezes and other problems."

As interestingly, Houser also points out that, "You have our word that we never experienced any of this in QA - in any of our offices or at Microsoft. I am horrified, and we are now working around the clock to rectify this situation."

"We would never shove anything out the door - we never have and never will".

Fair play to Sam for being so open - let's hope that GTA IV Q&A is running ever so slightly more like a prison camp where failure is met with punishment! Excuse us...

However, this failure of process could well provide some ammunition to Electronic Arts in its Take-Two shareholder-focused PR campaign. We would not expect to see anything too public just yet. However, we would expect to see mentions of "Quality Control issues with great creative" or "Creative teams should not have to rush things out" cropping up in EA briefings.