I'm guessing there was a lot of alcochol consumed at the Rockstar and Take Two offices last night. Yestserday morning
Manhunt 2 was
denied a rating in the UK (effectively banning it from store shelves), then yesterday afternoon Take Two
announced that the game had recevied the Adults Only rating from the ESRB which will keep the game off major US retail shelves. If anyone was really surprised by either of these announcements they need to stop reading now and go stand in the corner.
The question now is what will Rockstar and Take Two do with the game. Industry analyst/attention whore Michael Pachter has a few
suggestions over at GamePolitics which include trying to ship the game as is, editing the game and hoping to receive a lower rating, or scuttling the game entirely. Option 3 is pretty much a non-option as the company isn't going to throw away all the money they spent developing the game. I'm not sure what it would cost but I think they could go with option 1 and option 2. All they need to do is find an online retailer that's willing to sell the game at it's current rating and then promote the hell out of it while they sell a tamer version of the game through traditional means. We all know that
controversy sells games and Rockstar could get a lot of mileage out of fighting the system.
