"Both we and [Xbox-maker] Microsoft believe there was a big market for GTA IV episodic content," company CEO Ben Feder said during a call with investors on Thursday. "And some factors have affected their performance. Both were released significantly after the core unit … GTA IV, which was launched in April of 2008 and therefore weren't able to leverage GTA IV's initial marketing campaign and initial launch fervor."

The Rockstar-developed episodes, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, were released in February and October of 2009, respectively. Each cost 1600 points, or $20, at launch, and each included single-player campaigns that lasted more than a dozen hours, along with multiplayer and side content.

Take-Two and Rockstar also released the episodes in October on a standalone disc entitled Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City. Sales figures have not been publicly announced for the Xbox-only disc, though Wedbush Morgan Securities analysts Michael Pachter recently pegged the sales for the disc in its first month on the market at around 100,000 units in the U.S., a far cry from the millions of copies sold of GTA IV.

"Episodes From Liberty City seems to have been most appealing to those who have finished GTA IV and wanted more story and gameplay," Feder said. "Which is a smaller market than initially expected.
Despite the dour analysis, Feder did praise the episodes' critical acclaim and said they were "profitable contributors to the company, so we're pleased with them."

He said he thinks the episodes will do fine long-term. "There's very little precedent for this type of episodic content at the price point that we offered it. And so we're confident that these titles will continue to have a long life, just as we've seen a long life from all of our other prior GTA releases."

Colbert presses the point with a look at a couple of the games that highlight the "family" oriented nature of the Xbox 360 — first with a look at Left 4 Dead 2 ("The family that plays together, stays together."). Then with an examination of the values imparted to players via Grand Theft Auto IV ("Where yes you can pay a prostitute to work your crank. But then you can mow her down with your car to get the money back. That's just fiscal responsibility.").

Hey, I lol'd.

Thanks for the tip, Geoff!

Grand Theft Auto fan site GTA4.net spotted the five Games For Windows Live Achievements specific to Rockstars' first downloadable episode, hinting that the Xbox 360-exclusivity surrounding the episode is due to expire.

Those Achievements made an appearance following the most recent title update to the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV, issued by Rockstar today.

The short answer to the headline is likely "Yes," but we've reached to the developer seeking an official response.

The Lost and Damned for GTA IV PC [GTA4.net]

Full disclosure, I frequently game with Hot Blooded's Kreyg Dezgo (also the creator of this vid). You can usually find us in Borderlands. Last week he told me about this delightful "mod" - not literally, as no code is involved - that he plays in Grand Theft Auto IV multiplayer called The A-Team. It's four players vs. 12, and it is total mayhem.

To get the full effect you really need 16 players all briefed and abiding by the rules. But you go into a free mode game, with four players forming "The A-Team" and jumping in a van. They start at the prison on Alderney. Their goal is to outrun the 12 other players, chasing them in cars and choppers, to get to the airport in Dukes and escape via helicopter. Successful extraction = victory. "Death is not an option for the A-Team!" says Kreyg.

That is seriously an awesome use of GTA IV multiplayer. But if you don't have 16 of your closest friends available to pull it off, then I guess you're stuck with the following. Unless you have a better set of informal multiplayer rules?

What If The A-Team Had An NES Game? [Hot Blooded Gaming]

It's 15 days in Liberty City, recorded via timelapse. Hypnotising, no? Sadly, it's not embeddable, so you'll have to hit the links below to watch.

Vid [Eurogamer]
Vid Mirror [Rockstar]

Another reader Farnic (thanks Farnic!) sends this image, pointing out that the same image that appears in the Episodes from Liberty City also appears in Grand Theft Auto near Star Junction.

Make of it what you will, but do not make apple pie. You cannot make apple pie with this. Sorry, we already tried.

The ad, apparently for a fake movie, declares "Liberty City, It's Over!" implying, naturally, that we're all done here. "Next stop," it says, and that portion appears to be torn out, except for the word "Seagull." I think it looks like the name of a hotel, but who knows.

To the left of that is "Opens March Everywhere," and your guess is as good as mine as to what that means. But Rockstar knows what it's doing here, it's getting people to talk, and we've taken the bait.

(A picture of the entire "ad" is at the link below.)

Liberty City, It's over! Next stop? [GTA4.Net via VG247]

Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony arrives this week as the final planned release of the GTA IV saga that began in the spring of 2008. It follows the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC GTA IV and the 360-only GTA: The Lost and Damned, two releases that only avid franchise gamers would recognize as restrained. The trailers and talk issued by Rockstar Games prior to the release of Gay Tony implied that this third installment, this new adventure starring bodyguard Luis Lopez committing crimes for Liberty City's most warped and wealthy citizens, would return GTA to the dam-detonating, beach-partying gameplay eccentricities of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

That wildness appears during some glorious moment but never quite takes over Gay Tony, which proves to be closer in tone and style to GTA IV than San Andreas. The new episode introduces some strong new ideas to the series, demonstrates Rockstar's medium-leading sophistication in character creation and makes a case for no GTA ever having a single lead character again.

Loved
I Know These People: I don't think I know any cold-blooded killers or pill-popping gay nightclub owners who have crossed the mob, but I know suave players who get all the girls and I know people who are crushed with stress about money. I don't know anyone who has encased their phone in gold nor done the same for their Uzi. But that quality of just not knowing when to stop buying and flashing fancy things is a familiar and sometimes hilarious human quality. Rockstar's characters in Gay Tony — like so many of their GTA heroes, villains and passers-by — feel fascinatingly unreal both because they are colorful and because they stand out from most video game characters by exhibiting recognizable human traits. The Gay Tony cast is distinct and fun to be around. I cared what happened to these folks.

I Know This Place: GTA IV and its expansions may play differently in your world, but for me they bring a city I know well to virtual life with sometimes shocking specificity. In Gay Tony I was assigned in just one mission to parachute onto a building — one that was a replica of a skyscraper I used to work in. In another mission I was brought to a nearly perfect recreation of Manhattan's Chelsea Piers driving range and made to stand in almost the same spot where I witnessed Tiger Woods drive trick shots, except that in Gay Tony, I was doing the golfing and the goal was more brutal than promoting an EA golf game.

Even if you're not someone who would recognize the hundreds of New York City landmarks recreated in Liberty City — not just the signature skyscrapers but the slopes of certain streets and style of certain signs — you will hopefully feel the ways Rockstar uses Gay Tony to once again exploit the emotion of real geography. A leap from the equivalent of the Empire State Building — or a nervous wait to see whether the car that escaped your helicopter by driving into a tunnel under the Hudson River emerges on the other side in New Jersey — still has the texture and tension of something that feels realer than what so many other games offer, without feeling any less fun.

In The Sky: Of the two most commendable gameplay enhancements that Gay Tony offers to the GTA IV structure, the affairs in the air are the more likely crowd-pleaser. Luis can buy single-use parachutes to jump off any building or access 15 pre-determined locations that enter him into challenges to parachute from buildings, helicopters or even off a motorcycle that is driven off a skyscraper roof. In multiplayer, players can release smoke, the better to show their trails and attract gunfire from their so-called friends (A parachutist can't fire back).

Gay Tony also puts the player in control of more and deadlier helicopters than what the series has had before, allowing for the mayhem some players found missing from parts of the earlier GTA IV releases. Of course, the peanut butter and chocolate here is leaping from a chopper with a parachute, landing wherever you want.

In The Club: Not since Shenmue asked players to enjoy driving a forklift has it been so hard to believe a video game's implication that menial labor would be fun, but Rockstar somehow figured out how to make nightclub management a joy. You can try this task almost any night at Tony Prince's straight club, the Maisonette 9, and indulge in what feels like a laboratory experiment of GTA style and gameplay. You've got the soft-scripted gameplay of having to walk from lookout-point to lookout-point in the cramped club searching for trouble and then tossing said trouble out the front door. You've got the edginess of occasional sexual interludes while you go about this task.

And, best of all, you've got the winning twist: The seemingly random call from a co-worker that assigns you an emergency tougher management task that might have you racing to Tony's gay nightclub to rescue a rapper from being outed by the paparazzi or to the Bronx (aka Bohan) to get a sandwich for the do-nothing starlet whose assistant calls you for an update every minute. The collision of pop culture, crazy people and intermittently bawdy and violent content is GTA in a capsule — or in this case, in a club.

The Right Zaniness: The hyped return of a usable military tank may have thrilled the GTA fans looking for San Andreas wildness, but Gay Tony's armed vehicle feels like an obligatory throwback rather than a joyous reintroduction. The choppers are more fun to use. But even better than seeing Rockstar mine from their past — and sometimes they do it splendidly as is the case with the group dance-numbers in the clubs that briefly turn Gay Tony into a Bollywood flick — are the new attempts at colorful chaos. I welcome the missions that riff about Twitter or that threaten the life of — gulp — a blogger.

Johnny And Niko: Few moments in The Ballad of Gay Tony are as powerful as the appearances of Niko Bellic, this man who, GTA IV players know well, has a history, a life that sawed deeply through the streets of Liberty City. To see Niko just standing in a scene — on the side of a Gay Tony enemy — hints at the power of a GTA game that encompasses multiple playable lives. The Lost and Damned's Johnny Klebitz makes his own return as do other side-characters from the other games. In many cases, these appearances help flesh out the character of the characters or offer a new vantage from which to view a familiar event, rewarding returning consumers. But it is the appearance of those who I once played as that had the strongest impact on me and made me yearn for a GTA city in which I could be a part of more crisscrossed lives.

One Magic Moment: The randomness of the series' gameplay system has provided any of us GTA gamers a moment that felt magically unique, when a traffic pattern converged or an exploding car ricocheted in just this one way that created an unforgettable spectacle. Here is my magic moment in Gay Tony, one of my favorite random GTA experiences ever: A mission that I won't spoil left me accused of a murder I did not commit. Chased by a crowd of civilians, I stole a car and sped off, police in pursuit. The radio was tuned to the game's new Self-Actualization station a thematically peculiar offering of relaxing new-age songs. As I peeled away and sirens blared behind me, the zen chill-out sounds of that station suddenly seemed perfect as I tasted something I'd never experienced in a GTA before: Innocence amid the fury and chase of wrongful accusation. I had to relax. Everything was going to be all right and those sirens, if I just gained enough speed on the highway, would fade away.

Double Delivery: You've been reading a review mostly of $20 The Ballad Of Gay Tony, which you can download to an Xbox 360 and play in conjunction with the base disc. But for just twice the price you could play this game off of the Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City disc, get the equally-meaty and interesting Lost and Damned GTA episode (we reviewed it too) and not even need the full game. Given how much we also liked that other episode, that's an unusually helpful way to experience a load of single-player bonus content that would normally have required the purchase of the base game. (Note that, however you play, you access GTA IV and either of the episodes separately from a menu screen — you can't hop from one to the other while inhabiting the digital city.)

Hated
The Unchipped City: Much still feels progressive about Grand Theft Auto, but the immutability of its metropolis does not. In an era in which less-polished open-world games such as Prototype or Mercenaries 2 can react to player mayhem by letting a building hit with a rocket be destroyed and stay that way, it is jarring to see not one brick of Liberty City ever be shaken from its foundation. Even mid-mission environmental changes, such as the destruction of a huge crane, appear to be undone after a mission ends. Rockstar inadvertently winds up effectively conveying the powerlessness we citizens of massive cities might feel to leave a mark on our hometowns, and the technical and gameplay systems that could support any level of destructibility might not mesh with the values of detail and character the developers employ. But just as Gran Turismo's cars finally took a dent, it's tempting to desire that Rockstar's cities best budge someday.

Mom: Well, I actually liked Luis' mom. And his neighborhood friends were interesting too, but the game's early promise to tug Luis between the high-roller life of rich people crimes and poor people struggles too quickly evaporated when the mom missions abruptly ended.

Minor Multiplayer: GTA IV multiplayer is changed in small, good ways for The Ballad of Gay Tony, adding kill-streak benefits of extra money won in deathmatches and fueling car races with frighteningly fast Nitrous boosts. The multiplayer, overall, however, still feels skippable. Some may value its openness as a call-back to a time of lest scripted Grand Theft Autos, but it's hard to imagine the simple, do-it-yourself mayhem of GTA as it is currently presented in multiplayer having the tug on gamers' playing time that the deep single-player content exerts, to say nothing of competing multiplayer experiences on Xbox Live.

I have left so much out, thanks to Rockstar's generosity of content and my desire to leave some good things unspoiled. There are gameplay surprises and lengthy side-activities that I have left unspoiled. And somehow I resisted raving about Princess Robot Bubblegum, nor the new radio stations. Plus, in a console-GTA-first, missions can be re-played on-demand so that players can strive for time, score and side-activity goals. Value-shoppers would find plenty to like in Gay Tony. More importantly, so would fans of well-made games.

Gay Tony is not quite as unhinged an escapade as its superb trailers may have led players to believe, but it is an entertaining and colorful adventure with some great explosive moments and as strong a spine of gameplay and side activities as Rockstar has produced this generation. The entire GTA IV experience might be too much and a shade too similar to take in over a single marathon session, but paced out over its multiple releases, it's gone very well and ends strong.

(Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony was developed by Rockstar Games and published by Take Two Interactive for the Xbox 360 on October 29. Retails for 1600 Microsoft Points over Xbox Live ($20, a copy of GTA IV required) or for $40 as one half of the Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City disc (also includes Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, GTA IV not required). A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all main story missions and several side missions. Completed 62.29% of the game over the course of more than 12 hours. Died 32 times)

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Rockstar put out these five, foreshadowing what you can expect in the expansion. Luis scaling the Rotterdam Tower; flashing the Advanced MG machine gun, the titular Tony Prince and rival boss Yusuf Amir, and some shady deals going down under the overpass.

New Screenshots from The Ballad of Gay Tony [Rockstar]

The Mumbai, India resident started playing at his home on September 4 at 10:00 a.m. and wrapped up on September 6 at 2:00 a.m., taking only four breaks. His marathon play session was observed by observers and has earned its place in the Guinness Book, surpassing the previous record of playing GTAIV for 28 hours and 1 minute.

"There are so many other games which I have played for long hours," says Patnaik. But I had never tried playing this particular game seriously. However, I knew that I can do it after I saw my brother playing it ... I enjoyed the game very much. It's fun playing long hours. It wasn't that exhaustive for me, as one might feel."

To train for the event, he exercised, ran and did yoga, and while playing, he guzzled coffee and munched on dates. Next up, Patnaik plans to play for 48 hours straight.

"I enjoyed the game very much," he says. "It's fun playing long hours. It wasn't that exhaustive for me, as one might feel".

Mumbai youth makes world record in video gaming [ZEENEWS via GamePolitics]

Now the mean streets of Liberty City are only a 7GB download and $29.99 away from the net-connected Xbox 360 owner. The $30 price tag is consistent with retail prices on the Platinum Hits version of the title and only $5 more than GameStop charges for it used, so depending on how much you value your time and gas money, it might be a better deal to download the game via the Xbox Live Marketplace. If anything it will save those of you who traded the game back in after finishing the Lost and Damned DLC the embarrassment of having to re-purchase it again in order to experience the upcoming Ballad of Gay Tony expansion.

I know that feeling far too well.

Xbox 360 Games on Demand: GTA IV [Major Nelson]

The Rockstar team really shows off its cinematic flair in this latest trailer combining both the Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV, much like the retail release of Episodes from Liberty City does. The key here is having the proper pause in the action during the pause before the final na-na-na-na-nas start, and they definitely nailed it. Nice work!

A total of 250 new Gamerscore points can be yours upon the release of Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City or the downloadable episode, which follows the adventures of Luis Lopez, the man employed by the eponymous Gay Tony. If that's all you care to know about the expansion, tread carefully. The full list of Achievements is potentially spoiler-filled.

(Thanks to Philip for the heads up!)

Gone Down - 5
Complete all base jumps.

Diamonds Forever - 5
Complete the Trinity.

Four Play - 10
Hit a flag with a golf ball four times.

Bear Fight - 15
Win the L.C. Cage Fighters championship.

Catch the Bus - 15
Dance perfectly in both Tony's nightclubs.

Snow Queen - 20
Complete 25 drug wars.

Adrenaline Junkie - 25
Freefall for the longest possible time.

Maestro - 30
Finish the Ballad.

Past the Velvet Rope - 45
Score 80% or above in all missions.

Gold Star - 80
Score 100% in all missions.

The new Xbox 360 Platinum Hits inductees are Grand Theft Auto IV, Street Fighter IV, Left 4 Dead, Saints Row 2 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Two of those titles have sequels due out rather soon, so best to get them before they become antiquated by Left 4 Dead 2 and Super Street Fighter IV.

Price in U.S. dollars starts "as low as $19.99," price points that some of these titles have been flirting with for some time now. But according to the official release, some retailers are offering a buy two, get one free deal on the Xbox 360 budget line of games, passing the savings on to you!

Grand Theft Auto Precinct [Atom.com via Destructoid]

Rockstar's news release accompanying this video describes Amir as "The affable, cutthroat real estate and construction kingpin of Liberty City. Yusuf's vast wealth fuels his over-the-top lifestyle and desire for women and expensive toys, two of the Arab-born's unquenchable vices."

Of course, the game doesn't call it torture. I think the term they use is "extreme interrogation tactics." But when is something "interrogation" over "torture?" Is it just how badly you beat somebody up, or does it matter what you're trying to get out of the person/NPC?

In Brink, this is what happens: you're playing as a military operative in a futuristic setting. During a firefight, you sneak behind enemy lines and happen upon an injured rebel writhing on the ground. An option pops up, prompting you to press X to interrogate the guy and it looks like if you select it, your character pulls out an iPhone-iish device. Your character then shocks the heck out of the guy until he screams, "Okay! I'll talk!" Then your objective screen updates and a new icon appears on the map.

In the grand scheme of violence in video games, it's not graphic. It's actually similar to what happens to Snake in the first Metal Gear Solid when Revolver Ocelot has him strapped spread-eagle style and shocks him (as the player, you press buttons to Resist or Submit — Submitting kills Meryl and I couldn't hit that button fast enough). The difference in Brink is that my character is doing it to someone else. So on a gut level, I don't want to call it torture because I'm the "good guy," right?

But then there's the Punisher game with interactive torture. That's torture because I think the game goes so far as to call it so, but as a player I'm comfortable with it because I'm playing as the Punisher. Yeah, he fights for justice, but he's not what people would call a "good" guy. So it's okay for me as a player to play as him torturing somebody because that's what the Punisher would do — never mind what I would do. Besides, they were probably bad people who deserved it anyway.

Now think about Red Faction: Guerrilla where you're playing on the side of a rebel faction. Like Brink, it's a wartime situation and gaining information is crucial to the success of missions. In one scene, explored by Stephen Totilo, an NPC sidekick "interrogates" somebody for said information. With knives. Is that torture? If you're not sure, apply the same line of questioning to Killzone 2 when Rico gets a little "extreme" when interrogating an enemy.

To confuse you even more on the subject of torture, think about situations where it's not about information — it's about control. For example, there's the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City mission, Death Row and the Ransom mission in Grand Theft Auto IV. In both cases, somebody is deliberately hurting someone else for revenge or just because they're violent by nature. That's really easy to spot as torture — but at the same time, in GTAIV, you're playing as Niko, the guy that hits a woman tied to a chair and then takes a picture of her. You don't really want to call that torture, do you? It's easier just to play it down as no big deal or write it off because it's not an interactive part of the game — so "you" didn't torture anybody.

Lastly, let's talk about torture being inflicted on you, the player. In these cases, you probably wouldn't think of what you're going through as "torture," (unless it's a Saw game), but by definition, a game is deliberately inflicting suffering on you. Example: Missile Command. The game is about mutually assured destruction in the Cold War era, but at the same time, it's a psychological exercise that tortures the player: by design, you cannot "win" Missile Command. Sure, a lot of early arcade games were un-winnable — but by forcing the player to realize that no matter how good you are at the game, no matter how many quarters you sink into it, you cannot save six cities from a nuclear holocaust, the game is deliberately messing with you. A more obvious example of mental anguish inflicted on the player would be Fable II — because it's not just that your character is being electrocuted, it's that you're losing all of that XP you gathered and racking up evilness (which is torture to a goody-two-shoes gamer like me).

So what's really going on in Brink? When I zap the guy with my iPhone-looking device, am I committing torture or just "extreme" interrogation? I didn't see an option to just question the guy before shocking him. I'm not sure if there were other ways to get the information that the subject had. I do know that if the game actually called it "torture," I'd be way less inclined to play as that class of character. For me, that would be the worst kind of torture: role-playing as a character that I want to play as benevolent, and then being forced to do something I'm not okay with because the game has other ideas about where the line between torture and interrogation lies.

P.S. You want the line clearly drawn? Check this game out.

Image Cred — GTAIV
Image Cred — The Punisher
Image Cred — Fable II
Image Cred — MGS

The company's press release that accompanied the trailer promises guns, glitz and glamor and the most "over-the-top weapons and toys to cause mayhem for those bold enough to stand in your way." Return of the cartoonish chaos of GTA: San Andreas that was toned down for GTA IV?

Over-the-top, they say? How about cage-fighting, golf-cart stunt-driving and... a helicopter lifting the subway car our hero Luis Lopez is clinging to?

All footage is in-game, not pre-rendered. Rockstar doesn't indicate what is gameplay and what is non-interactive.

The Ballad of Gay Tony will be on sale on the Xbox 360's marketplace for 1600 points ($20) on October 29. It will also be sold in stores that day as part of a disc compilation with the first GTA IV expansion, The Lost and Damned. The downloaded version requires users to own a copy of GTA IV. The disc version does not.