Of course they delayed it, in fact pushing it into november wouldn't hurt either. I'll be playing gta4 right up until the autumn so releasing it in august makes no sense and I'd hazard a guess that the august date was fictional and they never planned on keeping to it.

Magazines will cover your game more if there is a release date, makes it easier to pace their news coverage.

come on people - I thought MCV, being a games industry publication, would attract slightly more rational postings compared to the usual "GTA FTW - this is just a rip off" rants.

We all know how long a game takes to design, program and test, right? Factor into that the amount of time for Sony and Microsoft to approve the game, then get it into production and you'll realise that claiming this date change is to allow the studio to add more GTA type features is just extremely naive.

Lets try to be more grown up, can we?

I can respect that more time is needed to refine the game. A delay can work wonder, the developer in me says its a good thing and the gamer in me agrees. Better games are the way forward.

Will this be the right move? I thought the first of the episodic content for GTAIV to be released around this time so won't most 360 owners be split on what game to play?
Only time will tell.