Rockstar Games today released an update for Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3, 360) targeting a number of online multiplayer issues in the open-world shooter.

The patch addresses numerous connectivity problems such as freezes during certain game modes, and bugs in races and race lobbies. The new update also fixes certain exploits, including one that allowed players to inflate scores in the Cops 'n Crooks gametype.

The latest update will be downloaded automatically upon starting up Grand Theft Auto IV on either platform. The full patch notes are viewable below... Read more

A film based on the open-world criminal antics of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto series is likely to never happen due to a 1977 movie of the same name, according to LA Weekly film columnist Nikki Finke.

That movie, which was directed by and starred Ron Howard (left), is said to be the source of a legal settlement in which Rockstar supposedly agreed to never make a Grand Theft Auto film as long as Fox never makes a video game based on Howard's work.

Left, Howard's Grand Theft Auto film. Right, Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV.

In other words, Finke claims that Rockstar has the rights to the Grand Theft Auto game series, while Fox holds the rights for the entirely unrelated, but identically... Read more

Grand Theft Auto IV publisher Take-Two spent millions to defend against the recent hostile takeover attempt by rival publisher Electronic Arts.

The news comes out of Take-Two's second quarter financial statement, which noted it had spent "$5.3 million in professional fees and legal expenses, with the majority related to Electronic Arts' unsolicited tender offer."

The company should be able to easily absorb the costs, after pulling in profits of $98.2 million, a marked improvement from its 2007 second quarter loss of $51.2 million.

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV has sold 8.5 million units to date, with 11 million shipped to retailers. The game managed to move 6 million units in its first week, amounting to some $500 million in revenue.

2K Boston and 2K Australia's underwater action title BioShock also did well for publisher Take-Two, with 2.2 million copies sold to date across both the PC and Xbox 360 platforms. A PlayStation 3 version is planned for release in October.

Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive revealed today that it has delayed the first piece of Grand Theft Auto IV DLC until the first quarter of its 2009 fiscal year, which runs from November 1, 2008 to January 31, 2009.

According to the company, the Xbox 360-exclusive downloadable content was pushed back "in order to provide a better balance in Take-Two's release schedule."

Little is known about two planned pieces of game-expanding content, though marketing materials refer to them as "episodes." Both were originally slated to debut before November 1, though the second pack was pushed into FY2009 late last year.

Actor Michael Hollick, who voiced Grand Theft Auto IV protagonist Niko Bellic, revealed to the New York Times that he was paid just over $100,000 for roughly fifteen months of work, with no royalties or residuals from the $500M earned by the game in the first week of sales.

"Obviously I'm incredibly thankful to Rockstar... But it's tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they're making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don't see any of it," said Hollick.

"I don't blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games."

Hollick noted that while his appearance in Rockstar's wildly successful opus has propelled him to new levels of notoriety, contracts between the actors' union and the entertainment industry offer no provisions for electronic media... Read more

Parents Television Council public policy director Dan Isett claimed in an interview that Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3, X360) awards points for drunk driving, before confessing that he hadn't played enough of the game to verify it himself.

When questioned by Arizona Daily Star reporter Phil Villarreal, Isett said that he had played the open-world action title, and that the game rewards players for driving drunk.

"I've actually played Grand Theft Auto IV, and it's right in keeping with previous versions. The series continues to lower the bar and this is the first game that has an alcohol content warning. You get points for driving drunk in this game."

When the reporter corrected Isett, the director backpedaled, offering instead that it was a "rewarded activity" which is "necessary for advancement." When ... Read more

Though Microsoft has lined up two exclusive downloadable episodes for the Xbox 360 edition of Grand Theft Auto IV, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president David Reeves is optimistic that the PlayStation 3 version will eventually receive some form of downloadable content as well.

"Well I think you probably will see [GTA 4 DLC on PS3]," Reeves told VideoGamer. "It's just that a deal obviously was struck between Microsoft and Take Two to do that, and if that's what they want to do, I think that's the last shot they have."

Reeve's underhanded comment is most likely referring to Sony's declaration that the PlayStation 3 has now outsold the Xbox 360 in Europe, though the Xbox 360 edition of GTA 4 sold 20% more than the PlayStation 3 version in the UK.

Few details have been revealed about the two Xbox 360-exclusive downloadable episodes, though the first is expected to arrive before November. Rumors have suggested that the content may go so far as to include entirely new cities.

Update: An update for the PlayStation 3 version of Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3, X360) is now available for download from the system's online PlayStation Network. Users will be prompted to obtain the patch when they start the game.

According to developer Rockstar, the update "prevents Gamespy's servers from being overloaded and therefore reduces the impact on those servers that were causing the game to stutter and lock up."

Added the company: "We continue to monitor the performance of the game both on and offline and will provide further updates as necessary. We want to assure everyone that, together with our hardware partners, we continue to strive to give our fans the best possible interactive entertainment experiences possible."

Original Story: A patch for Rockstar North's PlayStation 3 edition... Read more

Perhaps responding to Sony's claim that the PlayStation 3 has surpassed Xbox 360 in Europe, Microsoft today announced that the Xbox 360 edition of Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto IV outsold the PlayStation 3 version in the UK by 20%.

Of the game's $500 million worldwide launch, sales-tracking firm ELSPA/Chart-Track reported that 514,000 units of the Xbox 360 iteration and 413,000 PlayStation 3 copies were sold in the UK across its first week at retailers.

Microsoft claimed that UK sales of Xbox 360 hardware jumped 125% following the game's release. The company stated that, across the past week, gamers have spent more than 31 million hours playing Grand Theft Auto IV on Xbox 360, with over 9.7 million of those hours spend playing the game online.

Take-Two Interactive today announced that Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 4 has done a whopping $500 million in sales since the game's release last week.

Some 6 million copies of the game have been sold worldwide, 3.6 million of those coming in just the first day. Although the numbers exceed industry predictions, Take-Two was confident about selling six million copies before launch. The news should help Take-Two in its efforts to thwart Electronic Arts' current takeover bid. EA's offer has been for $26 per share, while Take-Two's stock closed Tuesday at $26.35 and should go even higher on this news.

Rockstar's open world shooter Grand Theft Auto IV clocked in at number one on the charts in Xbox Live online activity, Xbox Live director of programming Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb's revealed on his blog.

For the week starting April 28, the title beat out Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Bungie's Halo 3, which clocked in at second and third, respectively. Rankings are based on the number of unique users playing online while connected to Xbox Live.

GTA 4's top ranking knocks Call of Duty 4 off of a solid three-month streak at number one in online activity. The last game to supplant Call of Duty 4 was Halo 3 back in early January, shortly after the holiday blitz of new users hit Microsoft's online gaming service.

Following the Chicago Transit Authority's decision to stop carrying advertisements for Grand Theft Auto IV, publisher Take-Two Interactive has sued the CTA.

In the suit, Take-Two claims the CTA's unexplained removal of the ads violates its free speech and contractual rights. Reuters reports the company is seeking a settlement of at least $300,000 along with the reinstatement of the materials.

"The CTA has refused to discuss with us its outrageous decision to pull advertising," Take-Two told GameSpot, "while running ads for other forms of popular entertainment with similar content, including mature-themed TV shows and R-rated movies,"

The $300,000 advertising campaign, which included banners on city buses and bus stops, was scheduled to run for six weeks. Within the first week, local news affiliate Fox News questioned the CTA's decision to advertise the controversial game, with the ads removed shortly thereafter. At the time, the CTA said that Take-Two would not be charged for the campaign.

The ads include no overtly violent, sexual or otherwise graphic materials that would traditionally prohibit advertisements from running in public. The situation resembles that of past non-explicit GTA ads that still managed to spark months of controversy.

Contrary to speculation that the release of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV would harm the Iron Man box office take, the film pulled roughly $104M in weekend ticket sales, Variety reports.

Industry figureheads and analysts alike had been raising questions as to Rockstar's open-world action title's effect on Iron Man's performance as early as March, suggesting that the title would steal the spotlight from the comic book adaptation.

But with a relatively stellar opening weekend, it appears that the release of GTA IV last week has had little effect on Iron Man's sales. Sales data for the film's multiplatform game adaptation, however, has not yet been made available. Variety's Ben Fritz suspects that the game will have a more realized effect on home video sales and TV ratings than big screen features.

Last fall, several Hollywood executives blamed the arrival of Bungie's Halo 3 (X360) for a 27% drop in ticket sales and the lackluster performance of The Heartbreak Kid, causing some to fear the repercussions of Grand Theft Auto IV's release.

The North American version of SCS Software's bus driving sim Bus Driver (PC) has gone gold and entered the manufacturing process, publisher Meridian4 has announced.

With the title due out at some unspecified point this month, the publisher took the time to size up the mammoth competition that has everyone else holding back:

GTA IV stand aside because here comes Bus Driver! Can you drive buses in GTA IV...oh you can? But does it reward you for picking up and dropping off passengers according to a schedule...I didn't think so. One point to Bus Driver!

Though Bus Driver does not allow players to squash, splatter, or run over pedestrians a la Grand Theft Auto IV, it should be noted that improper braking or vehicular collisions can result in passenger injury and, subsequently, a lower score. ... Read more

We're a little late, but here's the weekend bump of the Grand Theft Auto IV discussion thread.

I just made it to the last mission, and boy howdy, it's tough. But approaching the end, I have a newfound respect for Rockstar's ability to put together a story. The epic saga of one Niko Bellic, as far as I'm concerned, is the best in the series.

I don't want it to end, but hey, everything does. And when it's over, I can still hop online for high-octane shenanigans with the rest of the Shacknews staff. So as we careen into the weekend, how are you all finding the game? Any crazy finds, big spills, accidental explosions into chunky kibble? Report in the comments.

Sony Computer Entertainment has issued a response to numerous reports of technical maladies in Grand Theft Auto IV which describe system freezes across both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game.

Yes, we are aware of what the message boards and a few of the industry blogs are saying about a 'freezing' issue with GTA IV on a limited number of PS3s.

Although we have seen an extremely low volume of contacts to our customer service department regarding such an issue, we want to ensure that every consumer has a great experience on our console and with GTA IV. All parties involved are working to isolate the problem for those few units and identify a solution.

No official statement has yet arrived from developer Rockstar or parent company Take-Two Interactive.

In addition to system freezes, reports of internet multiplayer connectivity issues have also surfaced, in which players attempting to start the title's multiplayer component were met with an error message reading "Cannot connect to game provider."

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV broke a record by moving 609,000 copies during its first day of release in the UK, according to MCV.

The previous one-day UK record had been held by Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which saw 501,000 copies sold in a 24-hour period.

Sales of Grand Theft Auto IV were closely split between platforms in the territory, with 335,000 Xbox 360 copies sold as compared to 274,000 for the PlayStation 3.

The game has also become the fastest selling Xbox 360 title in the UK, beating Halo 3's first-day sales of 266,000.

Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies revealed in an interview that the recently released Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3, X360) had a budget of roughly $100 million, marking the title as the most costly development of any game to date.

GTA IV's massive budget pins the title above the previous front-runner Shenmue, released for the Dreamcast in 2000 and costing an unprecedented $70 million to produce.

"It's like making a theatre production, a few movies and an album all to fit into one package," Benzies told the Times Online.

Benzies also noted that about 1,000 people pitched in on the game's development. Beyond the expected tasks of programming and design, Rockstar also set up time-lapse cameras on New York rooftops to capture the correct intensity of the rain, and took over 100,000 photographs on location to piece together Liberty City.

"We're constantly competing against ourselves," says Benzies. "If something isn't exactly right, it comes out of the game or gets fixed."

Riding the wave of controversy, Mothers Against Drunk Driving marks the latest organization to protest yesterday's release of Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3, X360).

Specifically, the group takes issue with "a game module where players have to drive drunk" as "drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime...not a game."

Though Shacknews is certainly understanding of MADD's concerns, the staff has yet to experience a mission where drunk driving is mandatory. In fact, the game recommends that players make use of a taxi once drunk.

Due to this content, MADD is calling on the Electronic Software Ratings Board to re-rate the game as an Adults Only title, as well as asking developer Rockstar to "consider a stop in distribution."

Grand Theft Auto IV is not the first title in the series to feature drunk driving. In 2002's GTA: Vice City (PC, PS2, Xbox), a mission from Phil Cassidy called "Boomshine Saigon" required players to drive to the hospital while drunk, causing blurred vision and loose driving controls.

Following yesterday's launch of Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3, X360), the Shacknews staff and many are finding it difficult to play the online multiplayer of the PlayStation 3 version.

Following reports from many readers that PS3 multiplayer access was sporadic, Shacknews attempted to play online and was presented with an error message that read "Cannot connect to game provider."

Shacknews can confirm that the PS3 edition was playable online in the hours following the game's midnight launch. It is believed that the servers are struggling due to high demand, similar to the problems that afflicted Xbox Live this past winter.

In Shacknews' experience, the connectivity difficulties do not affect the Xbox 360 iteration, which continues to have a functioning multiplayer component. As with the freezing issues that surfaced yesterday, developer and publisher Rockstar has yet to make any official comment.