If you ever wanted to buy a PS3 this may be time to do it. GAME, in the UK, is now offering the GTA IV PS3 bundle for pre-order. This bundle is essentially the one we seen that was coming to Sweden. Again the UK version is showing that snazzy box-art which is worth it alone. The price is £319.99, if your American you will find out that at that price it's really expensive (Over $600). But with GTA IV gone gold how can you resist?
After being delayed for two days, originally planned for opening on April the 15th, today Rockstar's Social Club will open it's doors for registrations. Be sure you register up for your chance to enter competitions and of course, extend your GTA IV gaming experience. With future games also using this Social Club, it's a registration you MUST have, there really is no reason not to register. Weather your purchasing GTA IV or not, there will be Midnight Club LA which will no doubt also make use of the Club.
It is unknown when today the Social Club will officially open, however we suspect before this-afternoon.
What is the Social Club? If you missed the news, here's some small snippets:
The LCPD Police Blotter will feature a map of Liberty City that tracks the criminal activity of the many players connected to the internet. It will feature information such as the more dangerous areas of town and which weapons are more common the others.
The Story Gang will be a leaderboard that will not only show who completed the main story arc of the game first, but also how long it took. People who become a member of this club will receive special online widgets and merit badges.
The 100% Club will be extremely popular as it will show who out of the millions of players will reach 100% completion first. The first 10 people to do so will be sent an ultra-rare commemorative 'key to the city' to mark their accomplishment! Later on it will rank members based on who will be able to get to 100% in the shortest amount of time.
The Hall of Fame will recognize those elite players who have reached the top of various different statistical leaderboards, and will also contain a personal awards display of awards earned in Social Club competitions and via reaching various in-game achievements.
The Liberty City Marathon will be a ranking of special physical milestones achieved in the game, from the number of miles walked, driven, or swam to the number of bullets fired and stunt-jumps jumped. Other events will be added as time goes on.
Register at: http://www.rockstargames.com/socialclub/
Kotaku has posted a very detailed overview of EA's bid to takeover, and it has some information that I didn't even know about. The problem is that it shows EA in a nicer light then it seems, but maybe that's what's going on, Riccitiello wants to help Take-Two, and maybe Strauss is being hostel in all of this.
Personally, I think EA just wants to takeover the GTA franchise and all the profits from this, but it doesn't matter what I think, read about it here.
Kotaku AU recently tracked down this quote posted on an Australian telecommunications news site.
Okay guys, I have some news for you regarding what was edited from the AU release. I just gave Take2 a call (a friggin expensive 1902 number!) and this is exactly what I was told:
"Well in regards to what Rockstar have removed for the Australian release, as far as we're aware there was only one sexually violent cut-scene which Rockstar felt would cause the game to be Refused Classification. Unfortunately we're not able to go into specifics until after the game has been released but I can tell you that the scene involves a weapon being inserted into an enemies private area during a mission where Niko is taking revenge after one of his close friends was forced into sexual intercourse during his stay in prison."
Seriously I thought he was joking ....I was like LOL you're joking right? He says "No. This is what Rockstar felt needed to be removed from the game for it's Australian release. We were recently given permission to release this information because as we understand, Rockstar originally made a press release stating that the game would be released uncut world wide. We felt it would be misleading not to release the information".
Interesting, reminds me of the 'manipulation of testicals using a weapon' scene that got Manhunt 2 in a lot of trouble originally. Please note that until Rockstar or Take-Two confirms something officially, this is still just a rumor.
Source: Kotaku AU
Media Morgue is saying that Rockstar and Take-Two are predicting to make $400 million in the opening week of Grand Theft Auto IV. They base this on what retail stores have ordered, and if it does reach $400 million it will be the largest revenue for any entertainment product (thats movie, game or otherwise) ever before. Which is in one word, "spectacular".
Microsoft's Halo 3 is the current record holder at $300 million in revenue in the first week from over 5 million sales of the game. However it's important to note that Halo 3 was on available on Xbox 360, where as Grand Theft Auto IV is available on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 giving it a larger audience.
We should have some sales stats at the end of the first week to see how it went.
Interesting article we found after reading about Kotaku's swag score was about the giant foam "Shocker" being a United States Patent violation. Confused? Well the story goes that the blog writer, Ricky Van Veen, invented the giant foam shocker hand in 2004 and got a legitimate US Patent for it. Which in itself is quiet surprising, anyway this basically means that in creating a foam hand of their own for the swag Kotaku and many webmasters received they are in violation of the United States Patent #D495749S.
However Ricky is one of the high-ranking staff members of CollegeHumor.com, and Rockstar just happen to be one of their largest advertising clients. So he's not that worried really, he doesn't plan on taking it to court or anything like that. However his final sentence in his blog entry sums it up really:
Though I must admit a high drama court case over “the shocker” would be a funny thing to see.
Source; Ricky!
The new Hip-Hop song, I'm So Fly by DJ Green Latern (who has a confirmed radio station in GTAIV), Ft Fabolous, Akon, and Fat Joe has been confirmed to be in GTAIV's soundtrack.
You can listen to the song here by clicking the play button below.
Source: Def Sounds
