Analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities is well known for making wild and antagonistic predictions about the videogames industry, but his most recent is perhaps one of the gutsiest to date and is bound to leave Sony bosses riled.

In a statement released earlier on today, Pachter states he believes the cause of Grand Theft Auto IV's recent 2008 is due to serious problems with the PlayStation 3 development of the title, which Jolt reports he says is currently in an “unplayable” state.

"We think it is likely that the Rockstar team had difficulty in building an exceptionally complicated game for the PS3, and failed to recognize how far away from completion the game truly was until recently," Pachter said.

The outspoken analyst also stuck his neck (further) out to declare that he reckons Take-Two (GTA IV's publisher) has a contractual agreement with Sony that means it cannot release the Microsoft Xbox 360 version before that of the PS3, meaning "any delay of the PS3 version necessitated a delay of the Xbox 360 version."

Indeed, footage of Rockstar's ambitious next-generation effort was known to be running from Xbox 360 hardware at the recent E3 Media & Business Summit in Santa Monica, so perhaps there is a little weight behind Pachter's claims?

Either way, it doesn’t reflect well on the PS3, which has previously been criticised as being awkward to develop for.