Just moments ago, Sony announced the exclusive PlayStation 3 IP they mentioned was coming from Rockstar back in 2007. Developed by Rockstar North, Agent will be set in the 1970's and will take the player across the globe in the shadowy world of espionage. Nothing else was shown or said.

Take-Two today announced their second quarter 2009 results. Here are some insteresting details from the results.

Red Dead Redemption:
Among the results is the announcement of a delay for Red Dead Redemption into 2010.

Mafia II and Red Dead Redemption are now scheduled for release in the first half of fiscal 2010 to allow additional development time for the titles and to maximize their full potential in terms of the quality of the player experience and market performance. 

L.A. Noire:

Take-Two kept reporting in their quarter results that L.A. Norie would be coming in 2009, however, L.A. Noire doesn't make an appearance in the list of games for this year. Could this mean that L.A. Noire has been pushed back again?

Beaterator:

Back in March when Take-Two reported their first quarter results, Beaterator had "to be announced" as it's platforms instead of just PSP. This quarter, Take-Two did the same so it's looking likely that Beaterator will make a jump to an additional platform.

Source: Take-Two

Rockstar in their continued support for Grand Theft Auto IV on the PC, have released update 1.0.4.0. However, this isn't a full fleged update but rather a maintenance update. This update is only really for bringing the game in-line with the new retail disc pressing (that means that new retail copies are now going to include all the patches so far), however, Rockstar Toronto did mention that this update does have updates to the resource management numbers which should improve performace for some.

Download: Update 1.0.4.0

This month's Game Informer has yet to hit news stands, however, some subscribers have received the issue early. According to Kotaku, Max Payne will be set loose a decade after the events of Max Payne 2 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Max is said to be balder, paunchier and more heavily bearded. For all you bullet time lovers, bullet time will remain in tact. The issue is also said to talk about a multiplayer component. We'll keep looking for more info.

Source: Kotaku

It seems the British are tired of their games being censored and banned...or so it would seem. Today, Britain announced that from now on the British Board of Film Classification will be doing just that, only classifying movies. Odd isn't it? I mean, don't you expect video game classifications to come from an agency that's only supposed to be for classifying movies? So how are football moms (by football, we mean British football) now going to make sure that games with titles such as "Grand Theft Auto" with guns on the cover are safe for little Jimmy? The British are going to start using the PEGI ratings system. However, it's not that simple. See the British have created an organization called the Video Standards Council. The VSC effectively has power to ban any game they feel is inappropriate, regardless of the PEGI rating. So much power that according to GI, they have the power to ban games from being sold online. Whether this power will be abused or not remains to be seen.

Source: Joystiq
Source: GamesIndustry

A while back, we reported that Bully had a few problems to do with lots of memory on 64-bit versions of Windows and suggested a temporary fix for it. Well today Rockstar has released patch 1.200 for Bully. The patch address this issue, improves the streaming for objects, and fixes random crashes and lock ups. If you have the game from Steam, it should update automatically. However, retail owners will have to download an updater file. Download the patch from the links below for your region.

Download: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish
Download: Japanese
Download: Russian

Rockstar has updated the official Max Payne 3 website today with the first ever digial high-quality screenshots of the game. We have posted them below.

Rockstar has just announced the second pack of content for Grand Theft Auto IV, titled "The Ballad of Gay Tony". This episode will focus on not Gay Tony, but rather Luis Lopez who was heavily speculated to be the protagonist due to the "Impossible Trinity" achievement. Here is an excerpt from the announcement.

The Ballad of Gay Tony injects Liberty City with an overdose of guns, glitz, and grime. As Luis Lopez, part-time hoodlum and full-time assistant to legendary nightclub impresario Tony Prince (aka "Gay Tony"), players will struggle with the competing loyalties of family and friends, and with the uncertainty about who is real and who is fake in a world in which everyone has a price.

GTAIV: The Ballad of Gay Tony will set you back a mere $20 or 1600 MS Points. Don't have Xbox Live? No worries! Rockstar has also announced a retail version of both episode packs called Grand Theft Auto: The Episodes from Liberty City which will include GTAIV, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony all in one package for $39.99 and does not require GTAIV to play.

The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Episodes from Liberty City are on track for a release sometime this fall.

Source: Take-Two

This morning Take-Two announced that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will be making it's way to the PSP this fall. The game has been retooled for the PSP featuring upscaled widescreen graphics, enhanced lighting, enhanced animation, and all-new story missions. It's going to be interesting to see how Rockstar Leeds translates the DS version's touchscreen mechanics to the PSP. The PSP version releases this fall on in both UMD and download from PSN formats.

For more information please visit: www.rockstargames.com/chinatownwars

Source: Take-Two

IGN recently got a chance to sit down and watch Red Dead Redemption being played. We've extracted the most important points below.

• Open World
• Along with San Digeo, Rockstar North and Rockstar Leeds are also working on the game
• Uses Euphoria
• At the beginning of the game, things from John's past come back and force him away from home and in to the wild
• Players will be able to accept missions, engage in mini-games, ride horses, trains and stagecoaches, hunt and go on killing sprees as they wish.
• The world is divided up into three large sections: Frontier, Mexico and Northern territories
• Progressing though the story opens up the other sections. Once unlocked, you can travel between them all via horse, walking, stagecoach, or train.
• You can use lassos and kerosene lamps
• Marston is the only person you play as
• Deadeye is still in and includes two skill levels
• Duels are still in
• You can carry up to 4 items
• You can't own property
• All items will be shown on his model
• Regenerative Health
• You can do deadeye and fighting while on a horse
• Full day and night cycles, ped system similar to GTAIV and dynamic weather system
• Dynamic roaming wildlife such as wolves hunting for rabbits or mountain lions looking for someone to feast on
• No load times transitioning from world to interior
• The game will include multiplayer
• Mid-mission checkpoints

Personally, the more I hear about the game, the more I cannot wait to get my hands on it!

Source: IGN

The official website for Rockstar's upcoming PlayStation 3 exclusive game, Agent, was quietly launched earlier today. Although nothing new is shown, no screenshots or details on the game, the websites presences means information is surely on the way. Agent was announced at the start of the month by Sony, it will be set in the 1970's and will take the player across the globe in the shadowy world of espionage.

We'll be keeping watch over the games website for any screenshots and details in the months to come.

Check it out: www.rockstargames.com/agent/

The official website for Red Dead Redemption has just went live. It features the trailer, the new screens we posted today and a couple of really cool backgrounds in different sizes for your PC, iPhone, Backberry, and PSP.

Official Site: Red Dead Redemption

Sad news today coming out of Rockstar New England. Kotaku is reporting that the QA team at NE, around 10% of the studio, were laid off on Monday. The QA team was singled out due to the fact that Rockstar already has a dedicated QA studio, Rockstar Lincoln. Rockstar has offered the affected employees a "fairly generous" severance package and are helping them find other jobs. Our hearts go out to the laid off employees of New England and wish them the best of luck at finding a new job.

Source: Kotaku

Last year, Take-Two mentioned when they renewed the Houser brother's contract along with other key members of Rockstar that the Housers and other key members of Rockstar were founding a separate video game company and that Take-Two would not own the company but would have an publishing agreement with the company. Today, Variety posted an article about an announcement for the company but before I could read it the article was pulled from the site. However, an RSS syndicate blog posted a brief preview of the article that mentions that the company will be named 4mm Games. The summary also mentions "...[4mm] hopes to reinvent the roll out of new titles using the Web".  By that it would imply that they are creating a Steam rival. On the other hand, I looked at the official website for the company and it says their focus is "developing online worlds that will define social gaming", which to me implies that they are working on a MMO of some sort. So at the moment, it's not totally clear yet of the focus of the company.The company has a mailing list sign up in the about section. Perhaps we'll hear something soon.

Official Website: 4mm Games
Source: Variety via Movienet

EDIT: It seems I was right about them doing a MMO. After doing more research, I found a video by Jamie King that explains the aim of the company a lot better.

EDIT 2: For anyone worried about Rockstar, don't be. No one is leaving Rockstar, not even the Houser brothers. This is more of a side project for the Housers. The day to day operations of 4mm are under the control of Jamie King who left Rockstar back in 2006 to be at 4mm full time. The title won't be Take-Two funded or even a Take-Two owned IP as Take-Two is merely just a publishing partner. It remains to be seen if Take-Two decides to publish the title under the Rockstar brand. Kinda like Prey which was owned and developed by seperate companies, but with Take-Two as the publisher which decided to publish Prey under it's 2K label. We're betting it will be.

Edit 3: When I read the contract renewal announcement from Take-Two, I assumed the Housers were involved with 4mm Games. The Variety article has since came back online and explains that Jamie King and Gary Foreman are the only two from Rockstar at the company. I apologize for making that mistake. However, just like I stated in edit 2, Rockstar is still not affected in anyway.

Today, Rockstar has officially launched the Mr. Wong's laundromat for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on the Social Club site. At the laundromat, you can earn up to 100,000 each day and unlock some new multiplayer clothing.

Social Club: Mr. Wongs

Last year I released a patcher that patched Manhunt to run on Windows Vista and Windows 7, however, the patcher used a hex edit method which relied on the executable being the same executable that I used. This caused problems with people that got their game from Direct2Drive, US retail, etc. In this newer patcher, it uses a Microsoft created way of changing the DLLCharacteristics of a compiled executable that's not dependent on hex editing and as such should work with every version of Manhunt.

Download: Manhunt Patcher

Rockstar has just sent out a broadcast announcing that the debut trailer for Red Dead Redemption will be releasing next week. It'll be interesting to see how much has changed from when it was just called "Rockstar's Old West Project" back in 2005. No specific date was mentioned for the trailer's release.

Rockstar has just released some new screens of Red Dead Redemption.

The new trailer should be coming later today.

Rockstar has just released the official trailer for Red Dead Redemption. We've embed the trailer below. If you want to compare things from the 2005 teaser, you can view it here.

Rockstar has announced through their News Feed that tomorrow, Wednesday 6th of  May, the debut trailer for Red Dead Redemption will premiere on the games official webpage, as well as exclusively on IGN. Following the release of the trailer, IGN will have a week of exclusive first-looks at the upcoming sequel to the hugely popular Red Dead Revolver. IGN's week of exclusive schedule is as follows:

• May 6th: Debut Trailer
• May 7th: Preview
• May 8th: Slideshow Video
• May 11th: A Man & His Horse
• May 12th: Into the Wild West

Be sure to check back tomorrow as we will have the Red Dead Redemption trailer here for your viewing pleasure not long after it is released. We will also be summarising and reporting on all of the first-look content posted on IGN over the next week. The media surrounding this game reminds me of Grand Theft Auto IV, and anticipation is sure to be just as huge.

Recently we reported that there were Paper-craft Models of people and objects from Chinatown Wars available for download from the Social Club. Well, as promised Rockstar Games has released another Paper-craft Model, this time of the Hellenbach.

Download: Social Club Download Section

Want your very own Huang or Sabre GT? While you obviously can't have a real life version of either, you can download, print, cut, and put together these very cool paper-craft versions of them. To download, you must be a member of the Social Club. According to the page, more paper-crafts are on the way.

Download: Paper-craft Models

Our friend Jack Thompson has been quiet for awhile now, so ever wonder what it is he spends most of his time doing? Well, feeding his fish, apparently. On last nights episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, the world famous magic duo looked into video games violence.

"In this episode, the duo debunks the theory of politicians and other alarmists that playing video games leads to teen violence by handing over a real semiautomatic weapon to a nine-year-old video game player to see if he becomes a human killing machine."

Surprisingly enough JT agreed to go onto the show and put forward his "opinions" on video game violence and, of course, Grand Theft Auto. Whilst spending an awfully large amount of his camera time feeding his fish, he mentions that he is an activist and attorney. Perhaps he forgot to mention that he was disbarred last September? Regardless, he takes his usual stance on Grand Theft Auto and such games being murder simulators and talks about the apparent "scientific tests" that prove it, which is later prove to be, well, bullshit. Thompson's credibility is also laughed at when Penn shows the truth behind the historical events Thompson typically falls back on in interviews.

If you've seen an episode of the show before, you'll be aware of how well the duo disprove many of societies idiocies. The final view on video game violence? It's all a load of BS, video games are learning tools and in fact very educational and sociable.

I strongly encourage you to check out the episode as it repeats throughout the week on Showtime. Jack Thompson is teased and shown to be the idiot he is, and if thats not enough to get you to watch it, seeing the theory of violence in video games and there effect on children and players in general debunked should be. No actual footage of any Grand Theft Auto games are show, but it is the main topic of discussion throughout the episode.

Last week the South Central Vehicle Pack #1 was released by Rockstar, today the 2nd pack, South Central Vehicle Pack #2, has been released for Midnight Club: Los Angeles. You can now purchase the pack from Xbox LIVE and PSN for 240 MS points/$2.99 respectively. The download adds these new vehicles to your game:

• 2008 Cadillac XLR V
• 2008 Lancer Evolution X
• 2007 Aston Martin DB9
• and bonus 2008 Ducati 1098 R

Same as the first package, Rockstar also released a new gameplay clip showing the new vehicles in all their glory, see below:

Please also note that the vehicles will only show up if you have downloaded the FREE Midnight Club: Los Angeles - South Central Upgrade. You can read all about the South Central Upgrade here.

Buy Now: Xbox Marketplace

The official website for Max Payne 3 has had a minor update today, with the addition of a downloads page consisting of an Official Wallpaper, Avatars and Buddy Icons. All of the downloads use the same image that appears on the front page of the website, however more of the character is shown. You can see the available downloads on the download page, a preview of the wallpaper can be found below:

Related: Max Payne 3 Downloads