Gerhard Potgieter

Last year’s recall of overheating Xbox 360s was caused by Microsoft trying to bypass  ATi and going straight to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to save cash, according to analyst outfit Gartner.

Bryan Lewis, research vice president and chief analyst at Gartner, said that the overheating problem in the Xbox 360s was caused by Microsoft trying to avoid using ATi.  It designed the graphics chip on its own, cut ATi out and took it to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to make.

However the chip overheated and in the end Microsoft had to go back to ATi  to redesign the chip so that it worked. Lewis that if Microsoft left the graphics processor design to ATi in the first place it could have designed a graphics processor that dissipates much less power.

It cost Microsoft $1 billion to conduct the recall.

Yesterday on Microsoft’s marketing-team-operated GamerScoreBlog, the publisher dished on the stats breakdown for the 6 million copies of the game sold in its first week at market.

According to retailers, more than 60 percent of all GTA IV games sold during the first week was sold to XBox 360 owners. Sony had not responded to queries for comment on this claim as of press time. According to Microsoft’s most recent numbers, the global installed base for the XBox 360 currently stands at 19 million as to the mere 13 million of the PS3.

Microsoft also said that the release of GTA IV caused a spike in the sales of its consoles to 54 percent week-over-week and that retailers’ data indicate that GTA IV is attached to new console purchases at a rate of 40 percent. GTA IV has also proven to be a hit at online gamers as the publisher noted earlier this week that the game had overtook Call of Duty 4 as the top XBox Live title for the week.

If you haven’t got GTA IV yet, I suggest you go out and buy it. As with all previous versions of the game the developers really put in allot of effort, and you can see it. If you are a PC gamer you’ll have to wait and see if this title will hit your market anytime soon.