Gamer buys old Xbox 360 Dev Kit for £5, discovering massive 118GB GTA IV Beta with cut-out features

The Grand Theft Auto community has another surprise to behold. An ordinary Xbox 360 development console was purchased for a mere £5 at a car boot sale in Edinburgh, and it turns out that it contains a pre-release beta of GTA IV with tons of cut content from 2007. 

The buyer, Janamatant, took to GTAForums and started poking around the console labeled “Rockstar North Ltd.” and shared images of the Xbox 360 marked as “Xbox 360 XDK.” It featured a custom dev OS and a 120GB hard drive containing nothing more than one massive file: a build of GTA IV from November 2007, which was 118GB in size. He dumped the entire archive online, and the GTA community has been going through the files, calling it one of the biggest “GTA IV Beta Hunt” finds.

So far, they’ve uncovered some interesting assets that never made it to the final game. The GTA IV beta build features an early ferry system, which appeared in the game’s initial trailers but never made it into the launch version.

GTA fans can now view the full models and textures for boats that were meant to carry NPCs around Liberty City. The beta also features an unreleased list of radio stations with a different roster of songs and DJ lines that didn’t make it into the final game.

However, what really takes the cake is that the early GTA IV build featured a zombie mode that fans had speculated about for years. The build includes early zombie models, hospital beds, animations, and references that indicate a scrapped minigame called “Z: Resurrection.”

Rockstar Games’ former technical director, Obbe Vermeij, confirmed that the Xbox 360 XDK kit is indeed legitimate. He also confirmed that the ferry system was cut at the last minute because of NPC AI issues, alongside some physics glitches. However, he remained vague about the GTA IV zombies, merely stating that it was an internal test.

According to Vermeij on X, “They were supposed to be moving back and forth, kind of like a train. We figured there would be too many issues with it, mostly collisions and AI issues involving pedestrians and vehicles sitting on top of another vehicle. We ditched them even though they were in the trailer.”