This is the trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV: Lost and the Damned. It debuted last night at the laughable Spike TV Video Games Awards—I’m sure we’ll post the winners at some point today—and it looks, I don’t know, quite aggressive. Loud music, bikers, the colors brown and gray, etc.

The trailer only mentions Xbox 360, which will lead to endless speculation about the existence of a PS3 version of the expansion pack.

My favorite comment on the original 1UP story: “That’s what M$ paid extra for? Expect better mods than this on PC.” That’s the impression I got, too.

via 1UP

GTA IV is set for a PC release on December 2 and Steam is currently offering Vice City for anyone who pre-orders before then. What are you waiting for?

Pre-order

Ah, the circle is completed. The GTA that we knew and fell in love with back in the ’90s is making a comeback in spirit with GTA: Chinatown Wars on the DS. Yes, the cel-shaded look is trendy but the isometric viewpoint and map/minigame screen are very suited to the DS (more natural than the Wii, apparently).

Somehow I doubt it will have the same level of ultraviolence that GTA and GTA II had (gouranga!), but the screens (here and here) are encouraging otherwise. [via Kotaku]

Electronic Arts has “moved on,” and is no longer interested in buying Take Two Interactive, the publisher of, among of games, Grand Theft Auto IV. EA made it official sometime Sunday evening, ending the months-long back-and-forth between the two companies.

Ask any gamer, and they’d tell you Electronic Arts was simply looking to buy the Grand Theft Auto brand, which, at least in the U.S., is good as gold right now. And since the holiday shopping season is rapidly approaching, EA didn’t feel there was enough time to cross all the Ts and dot all the Is—you know, business stuff—in time to get some of the holiday GTA money. So they balked.

There are other, larger business-y concerns going on here, but I’m gonna guess that none of you care too much about that.

Besides, isn’t it an unofficial rule of the Internet that you must hate everything EA does and produces?

Downloadable content (DLC) for the Xbox 360 version of Grand Theft Auto IV should be available this November. Eurogamer, in true Woodward and Bernstein style, claim to have a source who swears up and down that the DLC is shaping up nicely, and will be comprised of two, 10-hour episodes.

Considering many games don’t even top out at 20 hours these days, gamers should be in for a treat in two months’ time.

That is all.

Here we go, again. Looks like Rockstar Games could be in some hot water after an 18-year-old Thai teen confessed to robbing and murdering a cab driver because he wanted to see if it was as easy in real life as it was in the game. The miscreant said he didn’t intend on killing the man, but that he stabbed him to death once he started fighting back. As a result of this incident that took place over the weekend a Thai video game distributor has since halted sales of the title.

“This time-bomb has already exploded and the situation could get worse,” Ladda Thangsupachai, director of the ministry’s Cultural Surveillance Centre, told Reuters. “Today it is a cab driver, but tomorrow it could be a video game shop owner.”

Word on the street has it that those wacky folks over at Rockstar Games are sending out promotional Grand Theft Auto IV metal bats, to encourage the gift giving aspects of the game. Popular Mechanics reported getting one the in the mail along with a press release saying “‘Tis the Season To Swing Big and Go GRAND.” We don’t think they actually mean going on a grand crime spree. But try telling that to the teenagers arrested last week in New Hyde Park, NY. After beating and robbing at least three victims the group was caught and said they learned it from watching Niko Bellic. We hope the writers at Popular Mechanics don’t get any crazy ideas.

A Grand Theft Auto movie would be “super interesting” for Mr. Uwe Boll, the German director of great movies such as House of the Dead and Postal. You may remember Mr. Boll for being a giant douche in every interview he gives, up to and including this latest one with New York magazine, where he extols his love for the GTA franchise, He admits, rather caustically, that, if the game is ever turned into a movie, it’ll likely go to a Michael Bay or a Brett Ratner, a big-budget, big explosion hack director. Sounds familiar.

Honestly, I can’t be bothered with “hating” a director, especially since I’ve never seen his movies. Just know that he’d love to direct a GTA movie, but that he feels he’d never be allowed to.

There have been a few reports of GTA IV crashing on PS3s. The problem has been more or less identified as a problem with 60GB PS3 units, and Rockstar has advised that erasing your game data and reinstalling the game is the solution. Hmm. Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing people tried to avoid by buying consoles in the first place?

Want to see some British kid playing Grand Theft Auto IV 100 percent LIVE? Yes!!

The soon-to-be-sued young man set up a Justin.tv feed of himself playing a pirated copy of the game. He’s pretty hardcore about it: full audio, takes requests in the chat room (”Turn on electrochoc!” “You got it!”), etc. Pretty fun while it lasts. Shouldn’t be too long before Rockstar gets to him and/or Justin.tv

Stagueve sent us this super cool tribute to GTA which shows flyovers of most of the GTA:SA scenery. I’m not sure the Who music is quite right, but it is sufficiently martial to make me stiffen up a little, especially in anticipation of GTAIV and the promise of Russian mobsters Hot Coffee-ing gazelle-like ladies from the Ukraine.

Shameful. After MyFox Fox News Chicago ran a little piece questioning why a violent game is being advertised on city buses, the head of the Chicago Transit Authority had the ads removed. There are so many things wrong with this, from ignorance on parade to the violation of free speech as a public authority arbitrarily decides what gets to be advertised and what doesn’t. Earlier they decided that M-rated games were equivalent to X-rated movies. No doubt there are still ads for Cialis, the NRA, and the military still cruising around town.

In fact, this very issue came up in Boston with a marijuana legalization campaign and they sued the Transit Authority and won. Ridiculous, isn’t it? But this is how we do it. Two steps forward, one step censored.

Jack Thompson was not involved in this little fracas but I’m putting him in the tags anyway.

There’s no confirmation on this, so take it with a grain of salt, and also beware that there are SPOILERS ahead if you clicky this link. If that wasn’t spoiler-y enough for you, there are descriptions (also unconfirmed) here.

Personally, I believe that the best achievements in GTA games aren’t listed, because they can’t be predicted. There should be an achievement where you upload a replay of something utterly insane that just happened, and if it meets their standards you get the achievement. Then they could pack it up and send it back out as free content to put on the ingame TVs you walk past. How am I not a game developer?
[via Kotaku]

This reminds me of old times where you’d have a sheisty, inaccurate, hand-drawn map of say Hyrule crammed into the tiny instruction booklet. Some enterprising fellow uploaded some pics and promptly removed them, but not before they made it to the tips inbox at Kotaku. They’ve got it all nice and gallery-ed up so take a look.

The town itself looks interesting, and is obviously divided into island-style boroughs and about 50 or so neighborhoods. If you look closely you’ll see dots for new stuff like cabaret clubs, internet cafes, and old holdovers like Cluckin’ Bell and Pay n’ Spray. Just one month to go till you’re cruising those streets for real.

Apparently there’s some game called “Grand Theft Auto IV” coming out. I’ve never heard of such a game but so help me God if it’s violent or glorifies crime, I’m going to try to get on Fox News to talk about how bad it is for our nation’s youth. Maybe it’ll just be a courtroom style simulation where you play a lawyer who prosecutes people that steal cars. I’m guessing it’s that because Microsoft’s issued 500 Xbox 360 consoles with the game’s logo on the side and a briefcase containing various peripherals — much like a lawyer’s briefcase would contain various law-type things.

Xbox Drops 500 Limited Edition GTA IV 360s [Complex.com]

After reading part two of Edge’s interview with Rockstar’s president and GTA IV writer Sam Houser, published today, I went to the game’s Web site for the first time. I’m absolutely blown away by the attention to detail. Like, Radio Vladivostok is exactly how I’d imagine an ex-pat, Russian radio station. Dukes—Queens, where I live, unfortunately—is “where my maid lives… the best thing is the airport.” It’s true, people! Queens should be condemned. The bitterSweet, aka BlackBerry, let’s you “be everywhere and nowhere” simultaneously. It’s incredible that this is a video game.

Why would you watch some awful action movie when you can be immersed in such a detailed world?

The Making of Grand Theft Auto IV [Edge/Next-Gen.biz]

I plan on dressing like this quite soon

Do you time to read a 6,000+ word article on the making of Grand Theft Auto? Most people I know, writers included, would say “no,” then punch me in the stomach for asking the question. Y’all need to make an exception for this.

Edge, which, once again, is the only gaming mag I actually respect, has published the first part (of two) of its GTA profile. Needless to say, it’s tremendous. Read it. It’s Sunday, what else are you doing?

Tomorrow Edge publishes part two, wherein they discuss the upcoming GTA IV, which I’m now, having read all 6,000 words, looking forward to a lot more. Here’s to April 29.

Grand Theft Auto: The Inside Story [Edge/Next-Gen.biz]