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Grand Theft Auto 3 PlayStation 3 release date delayed

Music licensing "issues" radioed in.

The planned PlayStation 3 re-release of Grand Theft Auto 3 has been delayed due to music licensing issues, Sony has explained.

Sony had previously announced GTA3 would launch yesterday in North America, but it failed to arrive in the weekly PlayStation Store refresh.

A European release would presumably have followed today in our regular Wednesday update.

"Due to an unforeseen complication, the Grand Theft Auto 3 PS2 Classic is not publishing with today's Store post," PlayStation Store director Grace Chen wrote on the US PlayStation blog. "We will update you when a new release date has been identified. We apologise for the inconvenience."

"There were some last minute issues with getting clearance for a certain audio track in the game," PlayStation blog staffer Morgan Haro added. "But the teams at Rockstar are on it to review how to best get this title on PSN."

Grand Theft Auto will cost $10 (about £6.40) when it's finally released, and arrives as a vanilla port. There's no upscaled HD graphics or Trophy support.

ESRB ratings for Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City on PS3 popped up in June, although Rockstar has been quiet on the latter's launch.

Can't wait until the issue's fixed? The game was recently re-released on iOS and Android as Grand Theft Auto 3 Anniversary. Which, looking at Digital Foundry's comparison footage, appears far crisper than the PlayStation 2 original.

GTA3 on PS2 and iPad.

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