Kikizo recently got a chance to sit down and play Grand Theft Auto IV for PC at Rockstar's NYC office. We have summed up the preview below.

• The game is being ported by Rockstar Toronto, developers of the GTA 1: London 1969 expansion pack and The Warriors. They have also ported some of Rockstar's top games such as Oni for the PS2, Max Payne for the PS2, and more recently the Wii versions of Manhunt 2 and Bully.
• Texture quality choices range from high, medium, and low.
•  Other things that can be changed are shadow quality, texture filter quality, reflection resolution, and water quality. They all have 4 different settings low, medium, high, and very high.
• View distance, detail distance, shadow density, light distance, and even  vehicle density (which was only set to 33 in the console versions!) can all be set from 1 all the way to 100.
• Rockstar's was not lying when they said the draw distance was much better than the console versions. The previewer stated that when they were in a helicopter they could see the entire map and even saw individual traffic. No paint filtering effect, no lighting cover up and no wobbling, just pure and sharp scenery.
• The textures have been improved greatly.
• The reviewer loved RAGE so much as he went on to say "It's further evidence that RAGE is one of the best bits of technology in gaming right now."
• Multiplayer now has custom search filtering. For example, you can filter out games that have auto-aim on and vice versa.
• The number of players for online games have been expanded, however, Rockstar didn't provide the new number.
• If you are used to video editors, you are going to love Rockstar's replay editor.
• The game will render out videos in WMV format ranging from 720p to 1080p resolution.
• New artwork at the loading screen

 The PC version comes December, 2 2008. Be sure to reserve your copy!

Source: Kikizo

Sad and good news today coming from Rockstar. It seems Amazon and Gamestop were right. The highly anticipated PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV has been delayed shortly. The new release date is now December 2, 2008. The good news? Rockstar has released the official system requirements for Grand Theft Auto IV.

Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows Vista - Service Pack 1 / XP - Service Pack 3
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz, AMD Athlon X2 64 2.4Ghz
• Memory: 1.5GB
• 16GB Free Hard Drive Space
• Video Card: 256MB NVIDIA 7900 / 256MB ATI X1900

Recommended System Requirements

• OS: Windows Vista - Service Pack 1 / XP - Service Pack 3
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz, AMD Phenom X3 2.1Ghz
• Memory: 2 GB (Windows XP) 2.5 GB (Windows Vista)
• 18 GB Free Hard Drive Space
• Video Card: 512MB NVIDIA 8600 / 512MB ATI 3870

It seems the specs that were posted on the Games for Windows website a couple of months ago weren't too far off.

Source: IGN

Rockstar and delays have been an ongoing issue over the past year, each game Rockstar has released and announced over the last year has been delayed by some extent. It seems the PC port of Grand Theft Auto IV may suffer the same fate, JoyStiq has discovered that online stores Amazon and GameStop have changed the release date on the games product page to December 2nd, which is different to the date announced by Rockstar back in August of November 18th.

For those who have put off purchasing the game on PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 because they'd rather play it on PC, this no doubt will be disappointing. We are still unsure if this is official or not, but many large gaming websites have posted about this and Rockstar has not yet announced it true or false. We'll keep you posted.

Source: JoyStiq

Rockstar has just sent out a broadcast announcing that the "Infected" section on Rockstar's Social Club has launched. The section features statistics about how far the virus has spread, how many people it's claimed in the last 24 hours, and a break down state-by-sate(US). Also announced via the broadcast, Grand Theft Auto IV on the PlayStation 3 will be getting trophies this Monday (October 27, 2008). There will be a total of 51 trophies. The 360 version only had 50 achievements to we assume that a new trophy has been added. Also coming soon, the winners of the GTAIV Xbox Live weekend and more GTAIV PC news & media.

RockstarBroadcast: October 23, 2008

Yesterday, Lazlow stopped by the Opie & Anthony Show as he often does. One of the questions he was asked was about the highly anticipated DLC for Grand Theft Auto IV. The DLC will be called "Episode One" and will be released with-in the next few months.

He says "It will include more missions and a bunch of other content". The new missions will include new characters and they will take place in Liberty City. Lazlow didn't elabrate on the "other content". If you want to listen to the section of the show that featured this information, ukleeham on YouTube has kindly posted a video with the audio in it:

Lazlow also said that we can't expect another Grand Theft Auto game (a full-scale one, not a portable one like Chinatown Wars) for several years. He added that Grand Theft Auto IV was in development for 4 years, so we can expect about the same for the next game.

 YouTube: Lazlow on GTA4 DLC

Last week Rockstar released the official PC trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV via GameTrailers. Today, Rockstar has officially released the trailer via the official site without the GameTrailers' watermark and in high quality. We have embedded the trailer below. If you wish to download the trailer, just click on the download link below.

Download: WMV 720p

A couple of weeks ago we heard that the DLC for GTA IV will be released “this autumn”. After many different dates announced by both Microsoft and Rockstar, "autumn" sounded like another guess, but not an actual date. It has been clear up to this point that neither side was in collaboration with each other, neither knew the actual release date or even when they wanted it to be ready. Microsoft has finally taken the step of leaving the ball in Rockstar's court, rather then just fishing for dates...

Eurogamer recently asked John Schappert, who is the man in charge of Xbox Live, when the DLC will be released. His reply was:

"Frankly, I don't know, Rockstar are the people to ask for that."

He also added:

"I hope as a gamer, just like I'm sure you do as a gamer, the sooner the better. I can't wait for it."

Will the DLC still be released this year? Will we be getting a trailer/screenshots in the next few months? We will just have to wait and see.

Source: Eurogamer.net

An Italian magazine by the name of The Games Machine this month had a hands-on preview of Grand Theft Auto IV for PC, to be released 21st November. The preview included some new details on what the PC version will have that was not in the console versions of the game, as well as one or two new images and an exclusive interview with a Rockstar Games spokesman.

• “The Replay Editor will give the possibility to us to record, to save and to mount last the 30 second ones of game. Once our vicissitudes memorizzate, will be able also to be opened an appropriate inner software and to be changed the inquadrature of the virtual television cameras, rather than to add appropriate special effects. Col Montage Editor, instead, transition effects between a sequence will be able to be arranged several replay in a single sequence, aggiungervi traces audio from the sonorous column of the game and to be visualized and the other.
  All this job for what? In order then to go on the Rockstar Social Club, a site of services thought for the community about the Rockstar games, in which to exchange itself filmed and information but also to mail own records. “
• “In the game there will be also small improvements, like a upgraded version of map GPS, than it will allow now us to head and to cliccare with the mouse on a determined lease to catch up, and to add to it of notes and the images in order to personalize it.”
• “Depositing Sul multiplayer at the moment is not announced new modalities regarding those already present on consul, but they will come added of the filters in order to improve the system of matchmaking or shrinking the field of the variable ones”. The characteristic new of the multiplayer will come announced to short.
• “The power of puts into effect them processori for PC, it will allow to obviate to one of the characteristics of the series, that is that when they knows itself on a machine, of blow for road they begin to circulate of many of same our model. This trucchetto, made in order to lighten the CPU of the consul being made to elaborate a reduced number of poligonali models, is not more necessary on PC, that therefore it will offer a traffic less “monomarks”. The number of the cars and the pedestrians will be also greater on road”.
• GTA IV for PC has been played using pad the USB of Xbox 360 and has been tried 3 relative levels to is made been left over (beyond 50% of the completion). The game experience is analogous to controparte the consul.
• Playing with mouse and the keyboard, according to the editor, it is more scomodo that to play with the pad. “The adopted a position keys force in some make to virtuosismi from pianista and the possibility to move liberations with mouse the television camera when it is in disabilita machine the bringing back automatic rifle of the inquadratura behind the car. From the moment in which we will begin to guide we will have to manually move the television camera in the just angle-shot”.

Scans have also been made available of the 4 page preview, in Italian respectively:

Thanks for the information and scans GTA-Series.com (translated).

Rockstar has released the trailer for the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV via GameTrailers.

See: GameTrailers version or Our YouTube version