Speaking to VideoGamer.com at Games Convention last month Diablo III lead designer Jay Wilson has revealed which games he's been playing this year. Unsurprisingly Blizzard's own World of Warcraft has taken up a lot of his spare time, but Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction, C&C3 and GTA 4 have also been getting a look in.

"Well, I'm currently playing the PS3 Ratchet & Clank, which I absolutely love. I play a lot of World of Warcraft, and a lot of RTSs - so I was playing C&C3 earlier this year. I know it took me a while to catch up to it, but I have like this laundry list! I really enjoyed GTA 4," he told us during an interview last month.

Although GTA 4 is seemingly very different to World of Warcraft, Wilson thinks the two games have some things in common.

"I especially liked the way they introduced their campaign," he said. "It's funny, but we joke about GTA 4 that it's like an MMO but with one quest - and how did they pull that off? If we gave people an MMO with one quest they'd skin us alive! But really it means that they get to pace their game, but give people this open-world illusion that they have complete freedom, which is wonderful. It's a great way to create a game, and it's really fun."
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Microsoft has today confirmed that the first of the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV downloadable episodes is to be released exclusively for Xbox 360 this autumn.

The platform holder notes that the Xbox 360 will be the "only console with new Grand Theft Auto IV content available this Christmas".
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In a report issued Friday to review publisher Take-Two's earnings and EA's faded interest in buying the company, analysts Michael Pachter and Edward Woo of Wedbush Morgan Securities discussed the near future of the "Grand Theft Auto" publisher.

A stand-out element of their analysis is the following prediction about the performance of the Xbox 360-exclusive "GTA IV" downloadable content, in which they estimate how many of you "GTA IV" owners will buy the supposed two-part offering.
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Speaking to VideoGamer.com at a recent Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts press day at Microsoft's Reading HQ, Rare's senior animator Elissa Miller said that the time it takes gamers to play through a modern video game is pretty much "irrelevant".

Asked about the apparent move away from linear gaming to much more free experiences - LittleBigPlanet, Spore, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts - Miller said this is the kind of gaming she enjoys most.

"For some people, that's the most interesting part. I know it's what I enjoy the most. Rather than play a game through from start to finish, I like to get lost in it," said Miller.

She added: "The amount of time it takes to actually complete a game is almost irrelevant, nowadays."
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A Jamaican man who claims that he co-wrote a pair of reggae songs featured on one of Grand Theft Auto IV's radio stations filed suit over the issue against Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive in July.

The suit was dropped yesterday in federal court in Manhattan.
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The Sun: A TEEN sex beast attacked four women in an imitation of violent computer game Grand Theft Auto, a court heard yesterday.
Ryan Chinnery, 19, prowled streets in his car targeting females he thought were prostitutes after becoming obsessed with the video nasty.

He assaulted his victims, none of them hookers, by night in a two-month period.

And the court was told he may have been influenced by the virtual reality game, in which a character drives around on "missions" - including approaching prostitutes who can be beaten up.
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Gamedaily writes: "In the wake of the recent GTA fueled quarter for Take-Two Interactive, analysts have weighed in on the publisher's future. UBS analyst Ben Schachter and Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter both mention management's belief that GTA IV could ultimately outsell its predecessor GTA: San Andreas, which would mean the blockbuster title would sell over 23 million units. To date, the game has shipped around 11 million units and sold through 10 million to consumers.

"In our view, the 1 million units remaining at retail will be sufficient to satisfy consumer demand for the balance of this quarter," noted Pachter. "While we expect some reorders in Q1:09, we expect orders to approximate 30% of hardware sales in Take-Two's addressable market, or around 2.5 million additional units.'"
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Speaking in an earnings call following the release of Q3 financials last night, Take-Two CEO Ben Feder said that old GTA titles have sold in seven figure units for the quarter.
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In Take-Two's third-quarter earnings call last night, CEO Ben Feder said that Rockstar is planning a new Christmas push for GTA IV.
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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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Sources close to Rockstar North have told Eurogamer that downloadable Grand Theft Auto IV content is on track for a late November release.

Parent company Take-Two previously changed the date from autumn to some time between November 2008 and January 2009 - leaving our stockings at risk of being empty.

The content, which is "absolutely exclusive" to Xbox 360, will be made up of at least two episodes around 10 hours in length, complete with extra unlockable Achievements. Speculation on what form it will take has ranged from additional cities to developed side-missions with brand new stories to unravel. There's been no mention of what all this will cost.
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Microsoft unwilling to commit to "autumn" release, and Rockstar isn't talking.

Xbox 360 owners hoping for fresh Grand Theft Auto IV missions this fall might have to wait until next year.
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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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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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The first of the two pieces of Xbox 360-exclusive downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV will add approximately 15 hours of gameplay to the 360 version when it hits this November, according to an unconfirmed report from web comic RPG-TV.
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Torrence Davis of The Bitbag writes, "Last night on the Warzone, Weapon X gave us the skinny on the GTAIV DLC. Here are the things he mentioned:

1. GTAIV DLC will arrive in late October or Early November
2. The DLC will be more like an expansion pack
3. It's rumored to cost 1600 MS points and will be very large

None of this is confirmed yet but Weapon X has some very good sources. Stay tuned for more info on this in the coming weeks."
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