Strange GTA V Re-release on Xbox 360 in Japan (Patreon)

Original Xbox 360 release of GTA V in Japan was released in 2013. You can freely find this release literally everywhere starting from Japanese auctions and continue with eBay.

I was kinda surprised to find that there is yet another Japanese release of the same game and according to the back cover, it was out in 2014. I bet I was lucky enough to spot it on eBay for a dirt cheap price so I decided to buy it.

You might ask me, what is so special about it? 

Well, It is clearly a re-release... I would say a strange one.

First of all, all these files were burn to the disc on 21.10.13 (DD/MM/YY) and they are older by two months.

Despite the fact that it says October 2013, this re-release was probably out in 2014, because you can spot this year everywhere on discs and on the back cover. 

Did you notice one interesting thing near the barcode? Well, the re-release was made in Singapore while the initial release, I assume, was made in Japan. Thanks to this, the re-release got a different case, which looks much better than the JP counterpart.

Moreover, I noticed that the material they used to print manual and map is much better as well. It doesn't feel like I am touching a sandpaper but rather a good quality glossy magazine. Just look at the light differences on the photo above and you will understand what I mean.

And lastly, according to the disc code, it was the first release in "4XP" production. This is a damn strange thing.

So... let's finally talk about the differences in the files.

~~~ExecutableSadly, there is nothing much to talk about. I mean the initial executable is identified as v0.0.0.11 while the new one is v0.0.0.15. Since I am not a coder, I can't track these changes. 

On the other hand, both of these executables have the same timestamp "Thu Aug 22 13:42:54 2013".

 ~~~Scripts

Interesting thing is, they changed only one script file and it is "stripperhome.xsc". I assume they added more censorship to it or did something else. Hard to tell.

~~~Less debug files

For some very strange reason, the developers finally decided to get rid of some beta files. In this re-release you won't find these files below:

builds.xml

datetest.txt

debuglocationlist.xml

debugnodes.db

icon.png

netverify.txt

prwlist.txt

Conclusion

This re-release isn't something unique, but I am glad that I had a change to look at it. Of course, it would be a good idea to compare some in-game elements, because who knows, maybe they decided to censor more things. On the other hand, they could do it via title update. I bet both of these versions share the same TUs.

I have a strange feeling that these minor changes were made, because someone decided to  move disc production to Singapore. Maybe it was much cheaper.... I don't know.