gta posts (Subscribe to this feed)

Nintendo's focus on "evergreen" titles has been a staple of the publisher for years now, with marketing support lasting longer than ever with this generation's major releases. So it surprised us last April when the company said it hoped "word of mouth" would help push GTA: Chinatown Wars' lackluster initial sales higher as the months progressed. However, when executive vice president Cammie Dunaway recently spoke with MTV Multiplayer, Nintendo's traditional message quickly returned. "Part of what's needed is you have to continue to put marketing support behind these titles."

She also called sales "frustrating, quite frankly," but declined to comment on Rockstar's marketing surrounding the release of the game. Dunaway remained diplomatic through the conversation though, only offering, "The old dynamic of 'throw it on television for a few weeks and then move on and forget it' just doesn't work," giving us little more than a taste of her real feelings behind the release's marketing push. Check out the whole clip after the break.

If we took away one important lesson from Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick yesterday, during the company's investor call, it's this: it takes a lot of time to make "triple-A" games. That's why Zelnick isn't interested in annualizing the Grand Theft Auto franchise. "We don't feel that GTA oughta be an annualized franchise," he said, adding that he was "pleased" the series has been "testing new formats and new platforms" this year with two DLC expansions on Xbox Live and GTA: Chinatown Wars for DS and PSP.

Instead of pushing out a new GTA game every year, Zelnick explained that Take-Two is focused on the "balance between how long it takes to develop such an incredible title that meets consumer expectations and how long you need to make sure than an appetite has been both satisfied and whetted [for the next game]." He padded his point with phrases like "high profitability" and "resiliency of the franchise," though when taken to task over how the publisher expects to make money in a "non-GTA release year" -- and in light of projected, continued losses from its baseball franchise -- he responded, "We remain committed to that goal [of profitability] ... naturally, we are disappointed that we're not projecting to achieve that goal in 2010." Meanwhile, somewhere in California, Bobby Kotick laughed maniacally.

Before you put on some sweats, make a little popcorn and sit down for your sitcoms tonight, you may want to gear up for some The Ballad of Gay Tony multiplayer. Rockstar Games has announced it'll be holding a multiplayer session tonight from 5pm - 8pm ET, allowing prospective Liberty City hoodlums to hang out with some developers in the expansion's new multiplayer modes for a bit of two-on-two action.

If you want to get involved, pack a parachute and send a request to these Gamertags:

• GwRockstar3
• GwRockstar4
• GwRockstar5
• GwRockstar6

And if you fancy yourself a bit of a voyeur or can't get to your Xbox, you can still watch the action from the perspective of one of Rockstar's employees at the Social Club event page here.

Time lapse videos were all the rage back in -- actually, we don't think they were ever rage caliber stuff, but in the case of this GTA IV video that shows 15 days go by Liberty City, it's at least reached "oh, that's neat!" territory. The video comes courtesy of DigitalFoundry (you can watch it over at Eurogamer) and reminds us just how much life there is in the virtual sand box, as cars drive along to their respective destinations, pedestrians shuffle about doing their own thing and, in the case of that one lady around the 32-second mark, loaf around the riverside all day and night. We just hope she's not doing what we think she's doing. It'd be such an unbecoming thing of the purest city in all of gaming, amirite?

With the release of this week's second Grand Theft Auto IV expansion The Ballad of Gay Tony, the game's developer has decided to update the online multiplayer statistics tracking in order to reflect the new multiplayer game types. The addition of "BASE Jump" to the mulitplayer as well as "new, tighter Deathmatch arenas" helped spur the leaderboard overhaul, according to the developer blog. The various new additions being made due to the DLC will even get their own section on the Rockstar Social Club, presumably for the four of you tracking your new GTAIV DLC stats after Modern Warfare 2 releases in a couple weeks.

We'd thought the Grand Theft Auto franchise had taken us to lovingly rendered simulacra of every metropolitan city-type known to man, but apparently, we thought wrong. In the back of the GTA IV: Episodes from Liberty City manual, a fake advertisement points to the series' "Next Stop" (seen above). Of course, the destination being teased is quite obviously the lovely town of Clip Artington, Minnesota. Surely you've heard of Clip Artington! It's renowned for its apple butter festivals.

On the off chance the teaser is pointing to a different city, we've ... we've really got no idea. Looks like a desert, though, right? And a mountain? And some conical, obsidian monoliths? What? Trees? Oh, yeah, that makes a lot more sense. We'd love to hear your speculation in a well-written, thought-provoking comment! There's a place for those right after the jump, you know.

[Image credit: VGChartz]

Rather than offer interesting social commentary or moody atmospheric tone, the just-released Ballad of Gay Tony teaser instead teaches us that Luis Lopez is not a joking around kinda guy. He takes shots, tosses dudes off buildings – he even goes to the driving range!

In case it weren't already glaringly obvious to you, the second Grand Theft Auto IV expansion will be taking itself quite a bit less seriously than the first digital release. Thankfully, the wait is nearly over and we can find out for ourselves tomorrow just how much Rockstar Games has twisted its latest opus.

Grand Theft Auto has always been heavy on satire, making exaggerated observations about the world for the sake of a few cheap yuks. It's readily apparent on the in-game radio programs, which poke fun at both extremes of political talk radio. The in-game TV programming does much the same (if you haven't, we suggest you make time to watch "Republican Space Rangers"). It looks like The Ballad of Gay Tony will continue the tradition with "Princess Robot Bubblegum," an anime parody to be featured on the in-game CNT channel. The show will serve as part of the new TV lineup in the upcoming expansion.

In Rockstar's own words, "Princess Robot Bubblegum" features the hallmarks of more than a few animes: "Incomprehensible narrative, wretched dialogue and creepy, misogynistic sexuality." See it all in the trailer above.

Good friends are hard to come by, especially on the seedy streets of Liberty City. That's why we're so glad the above trailer for Episodes from Liberty City (which features snippets from The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and the Damned) emphasizes the comradery one can experience in the city's many boroughs.

Don't believe us? Just ask The Ballad of Gay Tony protagonist Luis Lopez's childhood friends Armando Torres and Henrique Bardas, who have stuck with Lopez through thick and thin.

It would be outright unfair to spoil any of the hilarious, minute-long trailer for upcoming GTA IV expansion The Ballad of Gay Tony that we've dropped above. We would like to highlight its introduction of Yusuf Amir, a character who seems to be on the level of Brucie in terms of sheer personality. With any luck, we'll get to hang out with Mr. Amir quite a bit while playing through The Ballad of Gay Tony when it's released on October 29.

Meeting with Rockstar yesterday for our first hands-on with the PSP "remastering" of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, we kicked things off with a question that's on everyone's minds: What's happening to the DS version's touch-based minigames? The answer: They're all still in the game, just adapted to a button-based format.

We hotwired a car to try it out and were presented with a comic book panel-like inset that had us rotate the analog stick, time L and R button presses and rotate the stick again. According to Rockstar, similar mods have been made to all the minigames, but no minigames have been added exclusively for the PSP release. (Developer Rockstar Leeds did, however, deem the need to pay bridge tolls unnecessary.)

We were quickly pointed toward some added elements, specifically a new aiming "arc" for lobbing grenades and Molotovs while driving, copious bloom lighting (it was a rainy night) and punched-up explosions. The in-game "PDA" has also been redesigned slightly to mimic the PSP XMB interface.

Check out freshly captured new screens in the gallery below:

Though we'd love to spend our precious time poring over the just-released cover of upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV DLC retail pack, Episodes from Liberty City, we're not entirely certain of what to pick apart. The usual sexified lady and mean-looking gentlemen are present and accounted for, as is another helicopter to remind us of The Ballad of Gay Tony's apparent vehicle of choice. A few friends from the The Lost & Damned also make an appearance, but there isn't much else to ogle.

We still don't have a release date for the expansion or much more than a handful of screenshots, so we really hope you enjoy this box art until the first trailer hits tomorrow afternoon.

Earlier today, Rockstar Games released its first volley of screens for upcoming GTA IV expansion, The Ballad of Gay Tony. From what we can see in the four images -- handed "exclusively to fan sites," according to the Rockstar Games website -- it appears as though air-based warfare will be the focus this time around.

Eagle-eyed fans will also notice that the protagonist is wearing the same letterman jacket found in the teaser image Rockstar released last week for the game's second DLC, still scheduled to arrive this Winter, further confirming his main characteriness. All will be revealed this Tuesday we hope, with the arrival of the first trailer (and hopefully some new media alongside that). For the time being, peep all four images right here.


[Thanks, Adriaan!]

Notorious for not saying much about the GTA series until the very last minute, Rockstar Games stuck to form today in announcing the first trailer for upcoming GTA IV expansion The Ballad of Gay Tony. According to the company's website, a trailer for Episodes from Liberty City will be released this Tuesday, "featuring The Ballad of Gay Tony."

The only images we've seen so far from the DLC haven't been much more than loading screen art, and now the shot above of what looks to be Luis jumping out of a plane. Wait, jumping out of a plane? There were no planes in GTA IV! What is this madness?!

Rockstar has dated the second Xbox 360-exclusive DLC expansion for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Ballad of Gay Tony, for October 29. A disc-based retail compilation of the new episode and the game's first add-on, The Lost and Damned, titled Episodes From Liberty City, will be available the same day for 360. The news comes via a tweet on the company's Twitter feed and two official site updates.

The new DLC will be priced at 1600 ($20) while Episodes will run $39.99 and will not require a copy of GTA IV in order to play. To coincide with the announcement, Rockstar has updated the official Ballad of Gay Tony site with a new desktop background -- there's even an iPhone-formatted version for you mobile mobstas.