Rockstar Games have updated there Social Club page with a notice saying 'Pre-Registration Begins 4.17.08'. SC was originally going to be open to the public today but instead the flash front page came up with that.

If you don't know what Rockstar Games Social Club is, here are a few snippets of what going to be in-store for us.

• 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.

But that's not all that will be added, in the future there will be more added by Rockstar to cover other games respectively. Our guess is Midnight Club: LA will be the next to use the site along with some features coving it.

 Source: Social Club

When we predicted a possibility of Rockstar Launching Community-Centric Site at the start of this month we didn't expect to have it both announced and written about on the same day, only 2 weeks ahead. Today Rockstar announced their Community-Centric Site, called Social Club, which will make it's first deybue in Grand Theft Auto IV. Only hours later Yahoo compiled an article coving how using the Community Site will allow you to download music which can be played on your mobile in GTA IV.

Advertised throughout Liberty City, the cheekily-named "ZiT" technology is built into the game's mobile phone interface system. As players cruise around the world listening to the in-game radio, they can at any point 'mark' a song by opening their phone and dialing the number ZIT-555-0100. Gamers will then receive a text message with the song and artist names, and if they're registered at the forthcoming Rockstar Games Social Club community site, they'll find an e-mail waiting in their inbox with a direct link to a custom playlist on Amazon.com. All songs tagged "ZiT" will be stored here, available for preview and purchase at Amazon's going rate of $.89-$.99 per track. Best of all, those MP3s are free of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) limitations imposed on files downloaded through Apple's iTunes store and thus can be imported into any computer or digital device with no constraints.

We all know Music plays a large part of the Grand Theft Auto series, as well as gaming in general. With a soundtrack boosting over 200 songs, Grand Theft Auto IV has the attention of many record executives. Rockstar aren't just offering well-knowns either, most of the music in GTA IV as well as available for purchase through ZiT is music thats either unknown or was written exclusively for GTA IV.

None of those tracks, however, are accessible outside the game, and that's where GTA IV's model really takes off. Rockstar has boldly proclaimed that GTA IV's soundtrack is "the biggest in the history of entertainment," and with over 200 tracks, we're not prone to argue. In addition to high-profile tunes from popular artists, the developers are aiming for music geeks by handpicking rare, hard-to-find songs such as Electrick Funk's 12-inch treasure "On A Journey" and Elton John's "Street Kids" off his relatively unheralded Rock of the Westies. Some artists have even contributed brand new songs written exclusively for the game, including "Vagabond (Liberty City Mix)" by the Greenskeepers and "War is Necessary" from iconic rapper Nas.

So don't be planning on illegally downloading any of the tracks, you'd be wasting your time, and at $1 max. for one song, why on earth would you both? Your internet to complete your illegal download would cost more!

Source: Yahoo! Games

Remember a few weeks back when we reported that Rockstar was planning on launching a community centric site? Well Rockstar has just today announced "Social Club". The first game to use Social Club will be Grand Theft Auto IV. According to a press release, Social Club will provide these features.

• LCPD Police Blotter - A virtual map and tracker of single-player criminal activity logged in Liberty City from the aggregated data of millions of connected players - showing the most dangerous areas of town, most commonly used weapons and more.

   

• The Story Gang - This special single-player leaderboard recognizes players who complete Niko Bellic's main story arc of Grand Theft Auto IV - The leaderboard ranks players according to the total amount of playing time it's taken to complete the story, as well as a historical rank by who has completed it first. Members of this club will receive special online widgets and merit badges marking all of their in-game accomplishments.

   

• The 100% Club - Watch to see who will be the first to complete 100% of the game. The first ten people to be identified on the Social Club as reaching 100% will be sent an ultra-rare commemorative 'key to the city' to mark their accomplishment. In the future, the 100% Club will then carry a historical leaderboard showing rankings of who has completed 100% of a game in the shortest span of playing hours.

   

• The Hall of Fame -- This area will dynamically recognize those singularly elite players who have reached the top of the hill on various statistical leaderboards, and will also contain a personal awards display of special in-game landmarks and successes in Social Club competitions.

   

• The Liberty City Marathon -- A ranking of special physical milestones achieved in the game - from the amount of miles walked, driven, or swam - to the number of bullets fired and stunt-jumps jumped. There will be additional special marathon-based competitions in the future from this area as well.

Also, Social Club will provide leader boards. The press release goes onto say more stuff will be added after GTAIV's release. You'll be able to register on April 15th and the site will fully launch on the 29th along side Grand Theft Auto IV. Possible games for the future to use Social Club? We're predicting Midnight Club: Los Angeles and Beaterator (Music share anyone?) will be next but don't quote us on that as we might be dreaming too much.

Site: Rockstar Social Club