Take-Two's just re-confirmed it will ship DLC for the 360 version of GTA IV in fiscal 2009, beginning November 1 this year.
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A call has gone out for teens to help Briggs Digital Media, an internet TV company, cash in on the success of the GTA franchise.

A casting call for a short film call Game Over states, "Teens looking to appear in the upcoming short film must be very experienced players of "Grand Theft Auto.""

The movie will be directed by Bobby Garabedian, whose short film, Most, was nominated for an Oscar.
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Kotaku writes: "While we've seen countless story regarding children using Grand Theft Auto as their inspiration to do wrong, it's extremely rare that we see news about GTA being cited as a cause for good. It happened on August 27th around 9pm, as the Norris family of five was heading to Diamond, Illinois to visit relatives. Their 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee swerved off the road, hitting a guardrail and flipping four times before coming to a stop, caving in the roof and smashing out the back window. With her mother hanging upside down and her father pinned against the steering wheel, 11-year-old Audrey Plique climbed out of the back window and helped her parents and two younger siblings escape the car. The motivation for her heroic act, according to her mother Karen Norris?

'She just knew, from playing 'Grand Theft Auto.' She saw on there that when a car rolls over, it can blow up. She knew that could happen to us'"
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The government of Thailand was in an uproar after a nineteen year old man murdered a taxi driver and told police he was reenacting Grand Theft Auto. The extremely conservative Ministry of Culture has taken action by banning several video games from the country.

Earlier this year the Ministry released a list of objectionable violent games which it turns out were stolen from a list put forth by a Detroit prosecutor as a warning to parents during the holiday season of 2007. Hitman, 300, Hitman: Blood Money, Killer Seven and Fifty Cent: Bulletproof have all been officially banned in Thailand, and all of these games were on that list.
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TGR - "In our last edition of Rumor Killers we brought you word that Microsoft was expecting to release the first batch of exclusive Grand Theft Auto 4 DLC in November, alongside the new Xbox Experience. Turns out that might just be wishful thinking on Microsoft's part though, and anyone looking for a reason to go back into Liberty City will have to wait until 2009.

According to a a source close to Rockstar, there is no way the new content will be released until next year, with January or February 2009 being pinned as the early possible dates the new content could make its debut."
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A source close to Rockstar has told VG247 that Microsoft is "wrong" to expect the 360 GTA IV DLC in 2008.
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shacknews.com: The use of Grand Theft Auto as a scapegoat isn't going anywhere, says law professor Ashley Lipson. The trick is worth too much money.

"A good defense lawyer will blame everyone in sight, except of course the client. When he or she runs out of people to blame, it's time to look around for objects. What could be better than a popular videogame?"
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TGR - "Gearbox Software is no stranger to high profile games, particularly those of the shooter variety. The company behind the Brothers in Arms series has been hinting for a while now that they're working on something big, something huge, something so mind-blowing if they dared speak its name we would all prostrate ourselves and weep uncontrollably for weeks. The only problem is that we had no idea what this project was, until now."
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PSU writes: Grand Theft Auto IV unsurprisingly sits at the top of the pile for worldwide sales in 2008, shifting a whopping 6.29 million copies since the beginning of the year.
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Ripten writes:

"At ComicCon '08 GameTrailers had the opportunity to catch up with the voice behind Niko Bellic, Michael Hollick. Geoff Keighly prefaced one of his questions by stating that Rockstar has been very tight-lipped about the upcoming DLC, adding that no one knows what to expect. Michael responded by saying 'neither do I' ...

The GTA IV DLC has been shrouded in ambiguity since its very announcement. It's been 4 months since the release of the game, and we haven't heard so much as a snippet of news regarding downloadable content. The trend continues, this time courtesy of Leipzig Games Convention where Microsoft said, 'In autumn there will be news from Liberty City,' followed by a mouthful of marketing mumbo jumbo."
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Electronic Arts always seem to get the sh!t@y end of the stick when being discussed in the gaming community. Not least because of their aggressive buyout of top developers such as Pandemic, Bullfrog and such like, but also the tendency for them to invest huge amounts of money in acquiring licenses only to produce a bunch of shovelware that sits atop the festive gaming charts year in year out.

As if that wasn't bad enough - EA are now beginning to attempt to 'strangle' the second hand games market.
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Gamedaily.biz writes: "The folks at Nielsen Games have released a new report on Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV, which looks at reasons for purchase, platform preference and perhaps most interestingly the ability for minors to get their hands on the controversial title. In fact, Nielsen found that 17 percent of respondents in their survey who had purchased GTA IV were between the ages of seven and 16.

Elsewhere in the Nielsen report, the company found that Microsoft's exclusive episodic GTA content (coming this fall) did have some sway on consumers, with 25 percent of those who purchased the Xbox 360 version of GTA IV citing the extra content as a deciding factor. 64 percent said they simply prefer the Xbox 360 over the PS3."
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BioShock dev lead Ken Levine has spoken for the first time about his Take-Two compadres at Rockstar, saying the Sam Houser is the "most intense guy in the world" and that he shares the Houser's method of creating great games: "digging your f***ing teeth in."
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Bungie's Halo 3 took top Game of the Year honors during the G-Phoria awards last night, broadcast by game-oriented cable television network G4.

Xbox 360 was named the station's favorite system -- which falls in line with the award distribution. Of the show's 18 game awards, only four went to titles not available on Microsoft's system: Best Graphics and Best Voice Acting for Kojima Productions' Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Best Racing Game for Nintendo EAD's Mario Kart Wii, and, by default, Best Handheld Game for Ready at Dawn's God of War: Chains of Olympus.
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In an op-ed for the Star Online, Mohamed Idris, president of a Malaysian consumer rights organization has called for a ban on Grand Theft Auto and similarly violent video games.
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WSBTV writes: "Fulton County officials said they have arrested three teens and charged them with 57 felony counts in connection with a recent series of car bombings with Molotov cocktails in the city of Milton, north of Atlanta.

The felony charges include arson, criminal damage to property and possession of explosive devices in six vehicle fires between 11 p.m. July 24 and 3 a.m. July 25. Each teen is charged with 19 counts.

Officials said the teens -- ages 15 and 16 -- told authorities they learned "how to do it" from playing the video game 'Grand Theft Auto.'"
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...And in GTA IV, plants are one of the ONLY things you can't destroy...

'From killing sprees to the decay of society, Grand Theft Auto has been blamed for a lot of things. Add destroying plants. Swedish park supervisor Gert Axelsson is tired of the plants being destroyed in the park he oversees in Lulea, northern Sweden. "I am very much considering getting surveillance," says Axelsson. And what does he blame for the plant destruction and increased vandalism? GTA "where you wreak havoc in the city." He's totally right, you know. Because the potted plant mission is my favorite. Heck, I've been kicking over plants all week. Whenever I see a flower bed, I immediately think uproot uproot. Just like I was taught in GTA. We're surprised that people are just catching onto this now. People are so slow sometimes.'

So there you go. GTA kills plants.

Let's add it to the list...
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Maxconsole writes: "Rockstar games has updated the Official GTA IV website and it is now carrying a Games for Windows LIVE logo. This has sparked speculation that GTA may soon allow for cross platform play between PC and Xbox 360 and the PC may also be receiving the delayed 'exclusive' Xbox 360 GTA IV DLC..."
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GameTrailers TV and Spike TV have announced that they will be interviewing Michael Hollick, the voice of Niko Bellic, in an upcoming episode of GameTrailers TV. During this interview, they will be talking about the upcoming downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV.
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GamePolitics reports: "Absent speculation that Grand Theft Auto somehow played a role, the murder of a Bangkok cab driver by a 19-year-old-man in some ways appears similar to the typical murder of a cab driver in the United States.

In the U.S., cabbie killings appear to have very little to do with violent video games, given that they peaked in 1990-1993, when crude first-person shooters like Doom were the bloodiest games available and the first Grand Theft Auto was years away."
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