GTA Liberty City Stories (2005): The PSP Game That Sold

Critics in 2005 saw Liberty City Stories as familiar ground: GTA III's city, revisited, without moving the formula on. That undersells what it did. Rockstar pitched it as something never before possible on a portable, it became the best-selling game the PSP ever had, and Take-Two's own 2008 numbers show it outsold its critical standing by a wide margin. It is one of the clearest cases in the series of a game whose sales and reviews tell two different stories.

At a glance

What is counted, and how

Dates. Take-Two's press releases are the primary record. They give "October 2005" for the PSP launch but no day, so the PSP day comes from Metacritic's listing (Oct 24, 2005). IGN's review went up late that day US time. The PS2 dates come from two Take-Two releases; the April 2006 one also set Jun 9, 2006 for the PS2 version in Europe. We found no primary source we could open for the European PSP date, so it is left out.

Sales. Two figures, from two different counts. Take-Two's March 2008 investor presentation (made while fighting off an EA takeover bid) has a slide of GTA units sold by release year. The slide's text gives years, not titles: 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2006, plus 2008 marked "Shipping in Q2 2008." Those years match GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, the new GTA releases of those years, and we read the slide that way. The 8 million for 2005 most likely covers PSP and PS2 together, though the slide does not say. Guinness counts the PSP version only: 7,502,469 units as of Jul 20, 2013.

Review averages. Take-Two's slide gives 82% for the 2005 game and labels its scores "Metacritic review scores." Today's Metacritic pages show 88 (PSP) and 78 (PS2). A simple average of those is (88 + 78) / 2 = 83, one point above the slide. The slide does not explain its averaging, and Metacritic pages change as reviews are added, so we print both numbers and don't try to reconcile them.

Left out: sales after 2013, the later mobile versions (we saw them only in search summaries, not in a Rockstar or Take-Two source), and award claims we could not open.

The setup

Toni Cipriani comes back to Liberty City after a job for Don Salvatore Leone, who puts him under one of his captains, Vincenzo Cilli. The first missions show you the city and the controls, and the story quickly turns into a turf war between the Leone, Sindacco and Forelli families (IGN, Oct 2005). Because the story comes before GTA III, some bridges and tunnels from the 2001 game are still being built.

Rockstar announced the game in May 2005 as a PSP exclusive due that fall, to be shown by invitation only at E3. Rockstar Leeds built it together with Rockstar North, which Take-Two credited as the series' creators (Take-Two, May 17 2005).

What it changed

The main achievement was technical. IGN's Juan Castro wrote that "virtually every alleyway, sidewalk, and structure" from GTA III made it into the handheld version. Loading happened at startup, on loading a save and at cutscenes, with a short pause between islands and none while driving around town. IGN counted more than 70 vehicles and 10 radio stations.

Multiplayer was the other big addition. The PSP version had seven local wireless modes played across the full islands, from street races to a mode where one player holds onto a tank while the others fire rockets at it. The PS2 port of 2006 dropped all of it.

Not everything carried over well. IGN said the targeting system needed serious help. Auto-aim often locked onto civilians instead of the gangsters shooting at you, and with most weapons you couldn't run and shoot at once. The PSP has one analog nub, so moving the camera meant standing still and holding L.

PSP original vs PS2 port

Gap arithmetic: Oct 24 to Oct 31, 2005 is 7 days; November through May is 30 + 31 + 31 + 28 + 31 + 30 + 31 = 212 days; plus 6 days of June gives 225.

Reception

Critics liked it more on the PSP than on the PS2. IGN gave the PSP version a 9 and said the story's characters weren't as compelling as San Andreas's. The Globe and Mail's Chad Sapieha said its biggest weakness was that it did not move the GTA formula forward in any real way. The PS2 port got an 8 from IGN, which said there was no reason to buy it if you had already played the original, though at under $20 it was a lot of game for the money.

Legacy: sales vs reviews

This table is the reason this page exists. It puts Take-Two's own 2008 numbers for the five 3D-era releases on its slide in one place, with each game's units as a share of GTA III's.

Arithmetic: 8 / 14.5 = 0.552; 4.5 / 14.5 = 0.310; 17.5 / 14.5 = 1.207; 21.5 / 14.5 = 1.483.

Read the table this way. Liberty City Stories scored 12 to 15 points lower than the three console games, yet it sold more than half as many copies as GTA III, a console game released four years earlier (2001 vs 2005 on the slide). It also sold nearly twice as many units as the follow-up, Vice City Stories (8 / 4.5 = 1.78), whose slide score was almost the same. On these numbers, the second handheld game found a much smaller audience in its first 17 months than the first one did in its first 29 (Vice City Stories' Oct 31, 2006 PSP date, per Metacritic, and Oct 24, 2005 each counted to the slide's date, Mar 26, 2008). See /library/gta-vice-city-stories for how that game caught up later, and /library/gta-sales-history for the whole series.

The PSP record held. By April 2006 Take-Two was already calling it "the all time #1 selling PSP system game," and Guinness's 2013 figure keeps it there. Rockstar Leeds went on to make Vice City Stories and Chinatown Wars.

Trivia

• The PS2 version launched in North America at a $19.99 MSRP, and Take-Two set European prices at EUR 29.99 and GBP 19.99 in the UK (Take-Two, Apr 18 2006).
• Take-Two's fiscal year ended Oct 31, so the PSP game had 8 days on sale in North America in fiscal 2005 (Oct 24 to 31, counting both days). It still made up 3.0% of the year's revenues (FY2005 10-K).
• Rockstar North's president at the time, Leslie Benzies, and Rockstar Leeds' president, Gordon Hall, are both quoted in the announcement release (Take-Two, May 17 2005).
• IGN put PSP battery life at around four hours (IGN, Oct 2005).
• For more on the city across eras, see /library/liberty-city; for the game it precedes, /library/gta-iii.

Sources

• Take-Two (Business Wire), LCS announced for PSP, May 17 2005
• Take-Two (Business Wire), LCS PS2 release date, Apr 18 2006
• Take-Two (Business Wire), LCS PS2 available now, Jun 7 2006
• Take-Two, Board recommendation to reject EA offer, 8-K exhibit 99.1, Mar 26 2008, slide 12
• Take-Two 10-K, fiscal 2005
• Guinness World Records, Best-selling PSP videogame
• IGN, Juan Castro, LCS PSP review, Oct 24 2005, checked on the Wayback snapshots 2021 and 2012
• IGN, Juan Castro, LCS PS2 review, Jun 5 2006, checked on the Wayback snapshot
• Worthplaying, LCS PSP review, Nov 17 2005
• The Globe and Mail, LCS review, Dec 1 2005
• Metacritic, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
• Metacritic, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories